History of Curtea de Arges

One of the oldest towns in Wallachia, Curtea de Argeș was the capital of a small local state which was the start for the unification of the lands south of the Carpathians. The oldest archeological evidence of it being the seat of such a ruler date from the 13th century.

Câmpulung was the seat of Basarab I, the voivode of Wallachia, who was first mentioned in a document written in 1324 at the court of Charles I of Hungary. The next year, a conflict broke out between the two and in 1330, Charles I organized an expedition against the "unfaithful" Basarab and destroyed the Argeș stronghold.

The tradition of Wallachian chronicles of different from the Hungarian documents: it doesn't mention Basarab I and instead, they claim that Argeș was founded in 1290 by Radu Negru who crossed the Carpathians from Transylvania to found the cities of Curtea de Argeș and Câmpulung.

While Câmpulung is sometimes credited as the first capital of Wallachia, the Wallachian chronicles mention only Curtea de Argeș as being the capital, this being supported by the fact that the Hungarian documents mention that Charles I attacked the Argeș stronghold and not the Câmpulung ones.

In the first decades of the 14th century, a group of Catholic Saxon was brought under the authority of the bishop of Transylvania and they were settled in the city. In 1381, the then-only Catholic bishopric in Wallachia was founded in the city, being part of the Archdiocese of Kalocsa. In the 17th century, the bishopric moved to Bacău due to the decrease in the number of local Catholics.

After 1340, a new royal court was built at