Transylvania
When to go
July to mid-October. Near the end, this route crosses the Carpathians on the Transfagarasan, and that road is open only from about the start of July to the end of October; outside those months the way south is the Olt valley, and the best day of the trip is lost. September is the sweet spot: the road is open, the summer crowds on it are gone, and the forests begin to turn.
The stops
Interactive map of the route on our site ›
- Bucharestone night
Back to the capital, for a last night in the lanes of Lipscani, the old merchants’ quarter. Caru’ cu Bere, a beer hall opened in 1879, still serves under its painted vaults.
- Hasdeu Castle, Campinastop on the way
A small castle that the scholar Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu built in the 1890s after his only daughter, Iulia, died of tuberculosis at eighteen; he believed that she guided its design from beyond the grave, in séances. It is now a museum.
- Sinaiaone night
A mountain resort in the Prahova valley, named after the monastery founded here in 1695 by Prince Mihai Cantacuzino on his return from a pilgrimage to Saint Catherine’s at Mount Sinai. The royal family made it their summer seat, and the town grew around the palace in the forest above.
- Peles Castlestop on the way
The summer palace that Romania’s first king, Carol I, built in the forest above Sinaia from 1873. It made its own electricity and was lit by electric light as early as 1883; the inside is carved wood and stained glass, room after room.
- Brasov3 nights
A Saxon merchant town under Mount Tampa. The Black Church, the largest Gothic church in Romania, took its name from the walls blackened by the great fire of 1689. The synagogue on Poarta Schei street, built in 1901, still serves the town’s Jews.
- Bran Castlestop on the way
A fortress of the fourteenth century on the pass between Transylvania and Wallachia, sold to the world as Dracula’s castle. Bram Stoker never came to Romania, and there is no proof that Vlad the Impaler ever stayed here; in 1920 the people of Brasov gave the castle to Queen Marie, and the rooms are hers.
- Viscristop on the way
A Saxon village of coloured houses around a fortified church of the thirteenth century, in one of whose towers the villagers once kept their bacon. It is part of the World Heritage site of the fortified churches of Transylvania, and King Charles III owns a restored house here.
- Sighisoaraone night
One of the last medieval citadels in Europe that people still live in, a World Heritage site since 1999, entered under a clock tower with moving figures. Vlad the Impaler, the Dracula of the story, is said to have been born in a house on the citadel square.
- Biertanstop on the way
The largest of the Saxon fortified churches, inside three rings of walls; for three centuries it was the seat of the Lutheran bishops of Transylvania. Its sacristy door has a lock of nineteen bolts, and a small house in the walls served as a “marriage prison”, where a quarrelling couple was locked in together until they made peace.
- Sibiu2 nights
The Saxons’ Hermannstadt, whose roofs are cut with long narrow windows that look like half-closed eyes watching the square. The Brukenthal Museum opened to the public in 1817, among the first public museums in this part of Europe, and in 2007 Sibiu was European Capital of Culture.
- Balea Lakestop on the way
A glacial lake at the top of the Transfagarasan, at over two thousand metres. The road was built between 1970 and 1974 on Ceausescu’s orders, as a military route over the mountains after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia; it crosses the ridge in a tunnel, and in 2009 the television show Top Gear called it the best road in the world.
- Poenari Fortressstop on the way
The real castle of Vlad the Impaler, a ruin on a cliff on the south side of the Transfagarasan, reached by some fifteen hundred steps. The climb is closed at times when bears are seen near the path.
- Curtea de Argesone night
The monastery church of the sixteenth century here is the burial place of Romania’s kings, among them Carol I and Ferdinand with their queens. Its legend tells of Master Manole, who walled his own wife into the church so that its walls would stop falling down.
- Bucharestone night
Back to the capital, for a last night in the lanes of Lipscani, the old merchants’ quarter. Caru’ cu Bere, a beer hall opened in 1879, still serves under its painted vaults.
What it costs
Eighty dollars a night is the room. The car, the fuel and the road charges are yours: Romania has no motorway tolls on this route, but every car on a national road needs the rovinieta, an electronic road vignette tied to the plate, which a Romanian rental car normally already has. Parking in the old towns of Brasov and Sibiu is paid by zone, and the citadel of Sighisoara is closed to visitors’ cars, so park below and walk up.
What to know
Three things. One: the Transfagarasan. It is closed from about November to the end of June for snow and avalanches, and even in season the top can close for a day in bad weather; check before you set out. On the way up, bears wait by the road for food from cars — do not feed them and do not get out. Two: Romania has zero tolerance for alcohol at the wheel. Not one glass. Three: the main road from Bucharest to Brasov through the Prahova valley is one of the most crowded in the country, especially on Friday afternoons and Sunday evenings; in villages at night watch for horse carts without lights.
Roads, tolls and rules
Romania drives on the right, with dipped headlights on outside towns. The motorway runs only part of the way; most of this route is two-lane national road through villages, and the Transfagarasan itself is ninety kilometres of hairpins, a slow half day on its own. Rental cars are mostly manual; automatics must be booked ahead. Every day is short: none is longer than about a hundred and sixty kilometres, the Transfagarasan gets a day of its own, and the night before it is in Sibiu and the night after in Curtea de Arges.
Travel Transylvania
The route on our site, with a room up to $80 every night.