Jiu Valley

The Jiu Valley, known in Romanian as Valea Jiului, is a region in southwestern Transylvania in Hunedoara County, Romania, set in a valley of the Jiu River between the Retezat Mountains and the Parâng Mountains. Its surrounding peaks isolate it geographically, and by 2011 about 119,484 people lived there across six small towns. For more than a century the valley was Romania's largest coalfield and became heavily industrialized around coal mining from the mid-19th century onward, but it has suffered severe economic decline since mine closures began after 1989. It is described as the only region in Romania that is both fully urbanized and historically dependent on a single industry. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/