Transylvania
Locals sometimes shake their heads over the ‘Dracula connection’, but there’s no denying a sense of spookiness about this broad, mountainous, culturally rich region, which fills the bulk of Romania’s centre.
Locals sometimes shake their heads over the ‘Dracula connection’, but there’s no denying a sense of spookiness about this broad, mountainous, culturally rich region, which fills the bulk of Romania’s centre.
Much of Romania slags it and Europe in general doesn’t always speak favourably of Romania’s capital.
The heart and hub of Transylvania, this popular, Saxon-rich town is an inviting base with a week’s worth of day trips to castles, villages and mountains.
Constanţa is the gateway to Romania’s seaside activities.
Northern Dobrogea is undeniably a kingdom unto itself within Romania.
With thickly forested hills and tranquil valleys undulating off into the horizon, Moldavia mixes the rich folklore, beauty and turbulent history of Transylvania and the quietly appealing, bucolic paradise of Maramureş into its own fusion of the...
Just one letter away from ‘club, ’ Cluj isn’t quite as pretty or mountainous as the Saxon towns to the south, but it earns much of its nationwide fame for the dozens of cavernous, unsnooty subterranean discos that blare and bounce with many of the...
Iaşi (pronounced ‘yash’) has an energy and depth of character that would be instantly giddying if one had the power to see through concrete.
Timişoara (tee-mee-shwa-ra) stunned the world and disrupted sleep for evil dictators everywhere when its incensed residents instigated the 1989 revolution.
The areas of Crişana (north of the Mureş River) and Banat (to the south) have a lively, spiritual autonomy found nowhere else in Romania, driven by their sense of regional identity, ethnic diversity and tangible Habsburg influence.
Trailing Sighişoara, Braşov and Cluj-Napoca in travellers’ appeal, Sibiu was once the king of the Transylvanian Saxon towns, serving as capital and dominating cultural activity.
Dracula was born here.
Lively if not jaw-dropping in beauty, Târgu Mureş – with its nearly even Hungarian and Romanian populations, as well as a sizeable Roma population – offers a different slice of Transylvania, past and present.
Tulcea (pronounced tool-cha) is usually passed through quickly en route to the delta, so most tourists miss its unassuming appeal.
The delta’s ecosystems have been much maligned by humans, starting with the shortening of the Sulina canal at the end of the 19th century.
Backed by the Bucegi, Prahova’s shining star is Sinaia (see-ni-ya).
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