Câmpulung Muscel

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As all the other towns in Wallachia, Campulung evolved from a village to a larger borough that became a town at the beginning of the 14th century. This evolution was determined by population growth and the continuous, intense increase of crafts production and exchange.

In the first decades of the 13th century, Saxon manufacturers and tradesmen start arriving and settling in Campulung. The Saxon community that had formed here was led by a "count", the last of them, Laurencius de Longo Campo, thought to have lived at the end of the 13th century. Câmpulung is considered the first urban centre attested before the founding of the Romanian Country.

This certification is due to the Latin inscription on the tomb stone of the count, preserved to this day in the altar of the “St. James’s” Catholic Church. The inscription from 1300 is the oldest epigraphic document in Latin known in Wallachia and the first written mention of the city's name: "Hic sepultus est comes Laurencius de Longocampo, pie memoriae, Anno Domini M.C.C.C." ("Here lies buried count Laurencius of Longocampo, to his pious memory, year of our Lord 1300").

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