a military prison, where 1,200 French soldiers were imprisoned. During the 1848–1849 Hungarian Revolution, the fortress played a key role as it was besieged by the Hungarian Republican army for nine months until it was finally occupied in June 1849. After only 46 days, the Habsburg army moved back into the fortress and used it partly as a military prison for more than 500 officers. Most of the prisoners were sentenced to death. Among them were the 13 Generals of the Republican Army that were executed on October 6, outside the outer east walls of the fortress, and today are considered martyrs. In 1852, Emperor Franz Joseph I visited the fort and ordered some pardons. One of the most important prisoners who was imprisoned in the fortress was the Romanian revolutionary Eftimie Murgu. During World War I, thousands of Serb soldiers and civilians from Bosnia-Herzegovina were placed in detention here in an improvised camp outside the fort. Out of the entire number of persons imprisoned here, 4,317 died as a result of typhus and maltreatment. They were buried in several mass graves in the Pomenirea Cemetery. A plaque has been placed at the entrance of the fortress in their honor. The most famous prisoner in the fortress of Arad was undoubtedly Gavrilo Princip, who on 28 June 1914 killed the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo, an event which led to the outbreak of World War I. In an interpellation to the Hungarian parliament in Budapest during 1917, Ștefan Cicio Pop, deputy of the Romanian National Party, warned about the inhumane conditions in which prisoners were held in the fortress of Arad. After the first World War, the fortress was occupied by allied Serbian and French troops under French command, until July 1919 when it was handed over to the Romanian Army. In the interwar period, the fortress was a garrison of the 93 Infantry Regiment of the 1st Romanian Infantry Division. After the armistice between Romania and the Soviet Union, signed in Moscow on September 12, 1944, the city and the Arad Garrison were occupied by the Soviet Red Army. The city garrison remained a Soviet tank unit until 1958 when the Red Army retreated, leaving way to the Romanian Army. Currently the fortress is hosting a , operational since 1999. External links Site of Arad Town Hall – Fortress