Anastasia Haritonov · Pexels LicenseItinerary · Europe · 14 days · Moderate
Transylvania and the Carpathians
Bucharest→Brașov→Bran→Viscri→Sighișoara→Bicaz Gorge+8 stops
Saxon fortified churches, painted monasteries and Europe's largest population of brown bears - a two-week loop through the least-industrialised mountain landscape left on the continent.
Bucharest
Start in the capital rather than skipping it. The Palace of the Parliament is the heaviest building on earth and the second largest by floor area, built by demolishing a fifth of the historic city; the guided tour is the only way in and covers a fraction of it. The Village Museum outdoors by Herăstrău lake gives you the rural architecture you are about to spend two weeks among.
North to Brașov
Two and a half hours by train into the mountains. Brașov sits in a bowl under Tâmpa hill with a Saxon square, the Black Church - Gothic, and blackened by a fire in 1689 - and Rope Street, which is about a metre wide. It is the practical base for the next three days.
Bran, Râșnov and the bear sanctuary
Bran castle is marketed as Dracula's and has essentially nothing to do with Vlad Țepeș, which does not stop the queue; go early or skip it for Râșnov's hill fortress. Libearty at Zărnești is a genuine sanctuary for bears rescued from circuses and roadside cages, and is the responsible way to see them.
The Saxon villages
Viscri, Biertan and Prejmer hold fortified churches built by Transylvanian Saxons from the twelfth century - walls, towers and storerooms where a village could hold out for a siege. Seven are UNESCO-listed. Viscri has no asphalt through it and guesthouses restored with lime mortar and traditional joinery.
Sighișoara
A walled hill citadel that people still live in, with a clock tower, a covered stair of 175 steps up to the church and the house where Vlad Țepeș was born. UNESCO-listed and small - half a day covers it, and it is much better in the evening after the coaches leave.
Over the mountains to Bucovina
A long driving day northeast through the Eastern Carpathians, past Bicaz gorge - a road cut into a limestone canyon so tight the cliffs lean over it - and the Red Lake, formed by a landslide in 1837 with tree stumps still standing in it.
The painted monasteries
Voroneț, Humor, Moldovița and Sucevița have their exterior walls covered in sixteenth-century frescoes that have survived five centuries of Carpathian weather - the blue at Voroneț is a specific pigment nobody has reproduced. UNESCO-listed and still working monasteries, so dress accordingly.
Into Maramureș
West over the Prislop pass into the most traditional region in the country - wooden churches with shingled spires up to 50 metres tall, eight of them UNESCO-listed, and haymaking still done by scythe. This is not preserved for visitors; it is simply how it is done here.
The Merry Cemetery and the Mocănița
Săpânța's cemetery has blue-painted wooden crosses carved with a portrait and a rhyming verse about how each person lived and, often, how they died - frank in a way cemeteries are not. In the afternoon, the Mocănița steam train up the Vaser valley on a forestry line still in commercial use.
South to Cluj-Napoca
Down through the Apuseni to Transylvania's largest city - a university town with a serious food and music scene, a Gothic church on the main square and the Hoia forest outside it that Romanians will tell you unprompted is haunted.
Turda and the salt mine
Salina Turda is a medieval salt mine 120 metres down that has been fitted out with a Ferris wheel, a boating lake and a small amphitheatre, which sounds absurd and is genuinely extraordinary. The air is at a constant 12°C; take a jacket.
Sibiu and the Transfăgărășan
Sibiu's old town has houses with eyelid dormers that appear to watch the square. South of it, the Transfăgărășan climbs to 2,042 metres in a sequence of hairpins Ceaușescu built as a strategic road after the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. It opens roughly July to October and is closed by snow the rest of the year.
The Transalpina and Sibiu
The other high road - higher than the Transfăgărășan at 2,145 metres, older, and with almost no traffic on it. If time allows one, take this. Back to Sibiu for the evening; it was European Capital of Culture in 2007 and has kept the food scene it acquired.
Back to Bucharest
Three and a half hours south, with the option of stopping at Curtea de Argeș, where the monastery church is the burial place of the Romanian royal family and carries a foundation legend about a mason walled into the structure. Drop the car in the city.
Good to know
A hire car is close to essential - the Saxon villages, Maramureș and both mountain roads are unreachable by public transport, and Romanian roads outside the motorway network are slow rather than bad. Buy the rovinietă road vignette; hire cars usually include it but confirm. The Transfăgărășan is open roughly from late June or July to October and the Transalpina slightly less; both close with the first snow and the dates move every year, so check before committing a day to them. Romania has the largest brown bear population in Europe outside Russia and bears do come into villages and onto roadsides - do not stop to photograph them and never feed them, which is what created the problem on the Transfăgărășan in the first place. Guesthouses (pensiuni) are the best value and often include an enormous breakfast. Romania joined Schengen for air and sea borders in 2024 and land borders in 2025; the leu is still the currency and cards are accepted almost everywhere.
Shorter or longer?
Brașov, Sighișoara, Sibiu and Cluj are all connected by rail and the trains are cheap and scenic if slow. You lose the Saxon villages, Maramureș and both high roads, which is most of what makes the route distinctive.
Three days east from Bucharest to Tulcea and into the delta by boat - Europe's largest reed bed, a UNESCO biosphere and one of the best birding sites on the continent, particularly in May.
December to February for snow on the Saxon villages and Maramureș, with skiing at Poiana Brașov. Both high roads are closed and the driving needs winter tyres, which are legally required in snow conditions.
Practical guide
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Budget
Mid-range · per person · sharing a double room. Excludes international flights - they depend on where you fly from.
Editorial estimates · checked August 2026
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