Romania ( ( listen) roh- MAY -nee-ə; Romanian: România [romɨˈni.a]) is a sovereign state located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders the Black Sea, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, and Moldova. It has an area of 238,397 square kilometres (92,046 sq mi) and a temperate-continental climate. With almost 20 million inhabitants, the country is the seventh most populous member state of the European Union. Its capital and largest city, Bucharest, is the sixth-largest city in the EU, with 2,106,144 inhabitants as of 2016 ; other major urban areas include Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, Iași and Constanța.
The River Danube, Europe 's second -longest river, rises in Germany and flows in a general southeast direction for 2,857 km (1,775 mi), coursing through ten countries before emptying into Romania's Danube Delta. The Carpathian Mountains, which cross Romania from the north to the southwest, include Moldoveanu, at 2,544 m (8,346 ft).
Modern Romania was formed in 1859 through a personal union of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. The new state, officially named Romania since 1866, gained independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1877. At the end of World War I, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the sovereign Kingdom of Romania.
