# What is Romania's smallest town? It depends how you measure it

Băile Tușnad has the fewest residents; Bălan the smallest territory. All 319 of Romania's towns and municipalities compared on one method, so there is nothing left to guess.

Population: 2021 census (INS) · Areas: ANCPI commune boundaries, computed in Stereo 70 · September 2026

## Every town, one ranking

- Băile Tușnad: 1372 residents (smallest town by population)
- Bălan: 1.414 km² (smallest by area)
- Sulina: 9.5 inh./km² (lowest density)

### Top 10 — Population

1. Băile Tușnad (Harghita): 1372
2. Nucet (Bihor): 1987
3. Vașcău (Bihor): 2025
4. Băile Govora (Vâlcea): 2158
5. Borsec (Harghita): 2391
6. Solca (Suceava): 2405
7. Berești (Galați): 2473
8. Căzănești (Ialomița): 2938
9. Făurei (Brăila): 3008
10. Baia de Arieș (Alba): 3035

### Top 10 — Area

1. Bălan (Harghita): 1.414 km²
2. Victoria (Brașov): 1.85 km²
3. Băile Tușnad (Harghita): 1.89 km²
4. Ștei (Bihor): 6.542 km²
5. Eforie (Constanța): 7.162 km²
6. Plopeni (Prahova): 8.443 km²
7. Chitila (Ilfov): 11.85 km²
8. Băile Govora (Vâlcea): 13.467 km²
9. Făurei (Brăila): 17.455 km²
10. Fieni (Dâmbovița): 18.25 km²

### Top 10 — Density

1. Sulina (Tulcea): 9.5
2. Broșteni (Suceava): 12.01
3. Tismana (Gorj): 21.35
4. Băile Olănești (Vâlcea): 22.82
5. Zlatna (Alba): 24.93
6. Brezoi (Vâlcea): 25.11
7. Săliște (Sibiu): 25.2
8. Uricani (Hunedoara): 27.29
9. Însurăței (Brăila): 27.6
10. Negru Vodă (Constanța): 29.37

## How small is small?

- The town of Bălan fits inside Herăstrău park (1.87 km²), with room for a walk left over.
- Bălan and Victoria together fit inside Central Park (3.41 km²).
- Bălan is 5.3 km from end to end — about an hour on foot, unhurried.
- Bucharest holds 169 copies of Bălan; Vișeu de Sus, the largest town by area, 312.

## Why does Google give different answers?

Because the question quietly mixes different things. Here are the five confusions that keep recurring in articles:

- **Resident population vs. domicile population**: The census counts people where they actually live; the population register counts where their ID says they live. The gap reaches tens of percent in towns with heavy migration.
- **Locality vs. administrative unit**: Abrud-the-locality has a few thousand people; Abrud-the-unit includes three villages and all the land between them. Serious rankings compare units, not neighbourhoods.
- **Administrative area vs. built-up town**: A commune territory can hold forests, pastures, lakes and villages. The built-up footprint — houses and streets — is another measure entirely, with no comparable national dataset.
- **Old censuses vs. new data**: Many articles still quote 2011 or 2002 populations. Since then some small towns have lost a quarter of their residents.
- **Copied figures with no source**: Once a wrong value reaches an infobox, it spreads to dozens of articles. The Abrud case below is the textbook example.

## The Abrud case: 3.2 km² → 39.53 km²

Several articles claim Abrud covers only 3.2 km², making it the smallest town by area. The figure comes from infoboxes fed by Wikidata — not from any measurement.

The problem: the town's own strategy document (SIDU Abrud) states plainly that “the town of Abrud occupies an area of 39.53 sq km”. Our computation from ANCPI polygons gives 39.532 km², and independently drawn OpenStreetMap boundaries give 39.530 km². Three sources, one answer.

The explanation is simple: Abrud administers three villages — Abrud-Sat, Gura Cornei and Soharu — plus all the land between them. The 3.2 km² figure most likely describes something else (perhaps the built-up core, or an old error) and was copied onward from there.

That is why every area on this page was recalculated on one basis instead of copied from existing rankings.

## Locality, administrative unit, built-up zone: three different things

When you say “the town of X”, you picture streets and houses. When statistics say “UAT X”, they mean an administrative-territorial unit: the town plus its administered villages, plus the forests, pastures, waters and roads between them. (Romania ranks two kinds of urban places: the oraș, a town, and the municipiu, a higher-status municipality.)

That is why Sulina — a few streets between the Danube and the sea — officially covers 328 km²: nearly all of it the Danube Delta land it administers. And why Bălan, with no villages and no communal forests, covers only 1.41 km².

The built-up zone is the third notion: houses and streets as they stand. For fair national comparisons, this page uses one measure throughout: the administrative territory of the unit.

## Method

- Population: resident, RPL2021, definitive Table 1.03 (INS) — all 319 urban rows: 103 municipalities (Bucharest included) and 216 towns.
- Area: ANCPI “UAT limits” polygons, 23.12.2021 edition (via geo-spatial.org, OGL-ROU-1.0 licence), reprojected to Stereo 70 (EPSG:3844); square metres divided by one million.
- Bucharest: municipality-row population; area as the sum of the 6 ANCPI sector polygons (239.0 km² — against 228 km² often quoted from older sources). Sectors never appear separately in the ranking.
- Equal values share a rank and the next rank skips (1, 2, 2, 4); in the 2021 data this happens twice, for population.
- Cross-checks: OpenStreetMap boundaries confirm Bălan, Victoria, Abrud, Ștei, Plopeni, Chitila and Fieni to the decimal; whole-Romania area comes out at 238,397 km² against 238,391 official.
- Declared caveats: Eforie 7.16 (ANCPI) vs 8.03 (OSM, probably lake-inclusive) — rank 5 unchanged; Tușnad 1.89 vs 1.85 — rank 3 unchanged.
- Built-up footprint is absent as a metric because no comparable national source exists; improvising one would mislead exactly the reader this page wants to inform.
- Names and counties from the ANCPI layer (SIRUTA code kept on each row); one toponym fixed for spelling (Toplița).

## Questions

### What is Romania's smallest town by population?

Băile Tușnad, a spa resort in Harghita County: 1,372 resident inhabitants at the 1 December 2021 census. Next come Nucet (1,987) and Vașcău (2,025), both in Bihor.

### What is Romania's smallest town by area?

Bălan, also in Harghita: 1.41 km² of administrative territory — with no administered villages. Next are Victoria (1.85 km²) and Băile Tușnad (1.89 km²). Every area was computed here, on one method.

### What is Romania's smallest municipality?

By population, Orșova (8,506 residents), followed by Beiuș (9,745) — the only two municipalities under 10,000 inhabitants. Municipalities are higher-status towns designated by law.

### How many towns and municipalities does Romania have?

319 urban localities: 103 municipalities (Bucharest included) and 216 towns, under the SIRUTA classification used at the 2021 census.

### Is Băile Tușnad Romania's smallest town?

Yes — by headcount, on official 2021 data. By area it ranks third (1.89 km², after Bălan and Victoria), and by density it does not make the top 10. It depends what you measure.

### Is Abrud Romania's smallest town?

No. Abrud has 4,360 residents (28th by population) and 39.53 km² (45th by area). The 3.2 km² figure circulating online comes from erroneous infoboxes; the town hall's documents and two independent boundary sources confirm about 39.5 km².

### What does a town's area mean?

In this ranking, the administrative territory of the unit: the town plus administered villages and all the land between them — forests, pastures, waters. It is not the built-up surface (houses and streets), for which no comparable national data exist.

### What is the difference between an oraș and a municipiu?

Both are urban localities; a municipiu is a higher rank, granted by law to more important towns, usually county capitals. The rank brings a larger administration, not necessarily more residents.

## Sources

### Data

- INS, RPL2021 definitive results, Table 1.03 — resident population by municipalities, towns and communes (recensamantromania.ro).
- ANCPI, UAT limits, 23.12.2021 edition, via geo-spatial.org (OGL-ROU-1.0 licence) — the geometries behind the areas.
- OpenStreetMap — administrative boundaries for cross-checks (ODbL).

### Case documents

- SIDU Abrud (primariaabrud.ro): “the town of Abrud occupies an area of 39.53 sq km”.
- Wikidata P2046 — cited as the source of the 3.2 km² error, not as evidence.

### Scale references

- Herăstrău / King Michael I Park: 187 ha.
- Central Park, New York: 843 acres (341 ha).