Hungary is a nation in the European Union's Central European region. It is bounded in the north by Slovakia, to the northeast by Ukraine, to the east and southeast by Romania, to the south by Serbia, to the southwest by Croatia and Slovenia, and to the west by Austria. It is the largest country in the Carpathian Basin, covering 93,030 square kilometres (35,920 square miles). Hungary is a landlocked nation with no sea access. Hungary has a population of 10 million people, the most of whom are ethnic Hungarians, but there is also a large Romani minority. The official language of Hungary is Hungarian, which is the world's most commonly spoken Uralic language and one of the few non-Indo-European languages that is widely spoken across Europe. Debrecen, Szeged, Miskolc, Pécs, and Gyr are among the country's main metropolitan regions, as is Budapest, the country's capital and biggest city.
For thousands of years, the area of present-day Hungary has served as a crossroads for a variety of peoples, including Celts, Romans, Germanic tribes, Huns, West Slavs, and Avars, among others. The conquest of the Carpathian Basin by Hungarian grand prince rpád in the late ninth century AD laid the groundwork for the establishment of the Hungarian state. The crown was inherited by his great-grandson Stephen I, who reigned until 1000, turning his country into a Christian monarchy. By the 12th century, Hungary had established itself as a regional power, reaching its zenith in terms of culture and politics in the 15th century. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, it was partly conquered by the Ottoman Empire (1541–1699), which remained in control until 1799. In the early nineteenth century, Hungary fell under the control of the Habsburgs, eventually merging with the Austrian Empire to create Austria-Hungary, which continued to be a significant force until the early twentieth century.