🌍 Europe · Eastern Europe
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Best Things to Do in Romania
Transylvania's Gothic castles, wild bears in the Carpathians, haunted forests, underground amusement parks, and the world's most dramatic mountain road.
Transylvania's Gothic castles, wild bears in the Carpathians, haunted forests, underground amusement parks, and the world's most dramatic mountain road.
Romania is one of Europe's last genuinely wild destinations — a country of medieval fortresses on clifftops, ancient beech forests full of brown bears, mountain roads that wind to 2,000 metres above sea level, and villages where time has moved slowly since the Middle Ages. Transylvania is not just a Dracula myth: it is a landscape of real Gothic drama, and the Carpathians are an outdoor adventure playground that rivals the Alps at a fraction of the cost. These are the experiences that make Romania one of the most rewarding destinations on the continent.
The Carpathian Mountains cover roughly a third of Romania's land area, forming a vast arc of forested ridges, alpine meadows, and limestone massifs that roll on for hundreds of kilometres with barely a village in sight. On an e-bike, the high-altitude terrain becomes accessible to anyone — the electric assist handles the elevation gain while you focus entirely on the extraordinary landscape opening up around you.
The high Carpathian meadows above the treeline are some of the most beautiful open terrain in Europe. From these ridgelines you look out across layer after layer of forest-covered mountains fading into the distance, with limestone outcrops rising above the grassland and the only sounds being wind and birds. The scale is immense and the solitude is genuine — this is not managed countryside, it is actual wilderness.
The Airbnb Experience runs from local guides who know the hidden trails and high routes above the tourist circuit. Routes typically reach the high meadows above 1,600m where the views are most dramatic. No cycling experience is necessary — the e-assist makes the climbs achievable and the descents through forest tracks are exhilarating. Groups are small and the experience is genuine and personal.
The Transfăgărășan is Romania's most famous road — a 90km mountain highway built between 1970 and 1974 by Nicolae Ceaușescu across the highest section of the Southern Carpathians, reaching 2,042 metres above sea level at the Bâlea Lake tunnel. Top Gear called it the world's best driving road. For cyclists, it is something else entirely: one of the great European climbs, a continuous ascent through hairpin after hairpin above the treeline into an alpine wilderness of glacial lakes, rockfaces, and unobstructed sky.
The southern approach from Curtea de Argeș is the classic cycling route — 90km with approximately 1,500m of elevation gain, winding up through forest, past the Vidraru reservoir, and eventually above the treeline to the summit where the landscape becomes raw and Arctic in character even in summer. The descent on the northern side toward Sibiu is fast, switchbacked, and exhilarating. On a clear day, the views from the top extend across the Carpathian range in every direction.
The highest section of the Transfăgărășan is closed by snow from approximately November to late June — the exact dates vary by year. The road is typically fully open from July to October. July and August bring the most reliable weather and the most cyclists; September offers fewer people and beautiful autumn light. Guided cycling tours operate from both Brașov (northern side) and from Curtea de Argeș (southern side).
Romania is home to the highest density of wild brown bears in Europe — an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 animals, the majority concentrated in the Carpathian forests of Transylvania. This is not a wildlife park or a managed feeding station: these are genuinely wild apex predators in genuinely wild forest, and the guides who run bear-watching tours from Brașov have spent years learning where and when bears emerge from the treeline to feed.
Tours operate from purpose-built hides positioned in clearings where bears reliably come to feed at dusk. The hides are well-constructed and positioned for optimal viewing and photography. Sightings are not guaranteed but the success rate is very high — most tours see multiple bears, often including cubs with mothers, which represent one of the most powerful wildlife encounters available anywhere in Europe.
The sheer number of bears in the Carpathians means this experience is qualitatively different from bear watching in Scandinavia or other European countries. The bears here exist at genuinely natural population densities — you are not watching a carefully managed remnant population, you are watching bears in a landscape that has supported them continuously since the Pleistocene. The forest around Brașov is among the best preserved temperate forest in Europe.
Salina Turda is one of the most surreal places in Europe. Descend 120 metres underground into a salt mine that has been continuously worked since Roman times and which now contains a Ferris wheel, mini golf, a bowling alley, an underground lake with rowing boats, and a sports hall — all inside a cathedral-like void carved from solid salt, with walls that glitter and crystalline formations that have been accumulating for millennia.
The mine itself dates back at least to the 13th century and was one of the most important salt production sites in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The sheer scale of the excavated chambers is staggering — the main Rudolph Mine shaft descends through salt formations into a space large enough to contain a multi-storey building, with a panoramic lift and viewing platforms at various levels. The air inside is cool, clean, and reportedly therapeutic for respiratory conditions — it has been used as a halotherapy spa alongside the more improbable amusements.
Salina Turda is located in the town of Turda, approximately 30km south of Cluj-Napoca. It is an easy day trip from Cluj — 35 minutes by car or reachable by public transport. It combines well with a visit to the Turda Gorge (Cheile Turzii), a spectacular limestone canyon a short drive away. Entry costs around €15 and tickets can be booked online at salinaturda.eu.
Hoia Baciu is widely considered the most haunted forest in the world — a 250-hectare beech woodland on the outskirts of Cluj-Napoca where the trees grow in twisted, impossible shapes, where electronic equipment has been known to malfunction without explanation, where visitors have reported unexplained rashes and nausea, and where alleged UFO sightings were recorded and photographed in the 1960s and 1970s. Romanian scientists have studied the forest for decades and the explanations remain contested.
Whether or not you believe in the paranormal, the forest is genuinely unsettling. The trees grow in bent, gnarled forms that defy the usual patterns of forest growth — some scientists attribute this to unusual electromagnetic readings in the soil, others to soil composition. The circular clearing in the centre of the forest, where nothing grows and where the most intense phenomena are reportedly concentrated, is one of the stranger natural spaces you can visit in Europe. At night, with a guide who knows the forest's history and its most atmospheric spots, it is extraordinarily atmospheric.
Guided night tours depart from Cluj-Napoca and run for approximately 3 hours. Small groups are essential for the atmosphere — larger tours lose the feeling. The best guides are storytellers as well as naturalists, weaving the documented history of the forest (including the Cold War-era paranormal investigations) with the direct experience of walking through it in the dark. Even confirmed sceptics find it an unusual and memorable experience.
The Bucegi Massif is the dramatic limestone plateau that rises above Sinaia and Bușteni on the eastern wall of the Southern Carpathians — a 2,500-metre ridge topped by natural rock formations including the Sphinx (a wind-eroded outcrop that bears an uncanny resemblance to its Egyptian counterpart) and the Babele (clusters of mushroom-shaped limestone columns). The plateau is accessible by cable car from Bușteni, but walking it is a different experience entirely.
The ridge trek to Omu Peak at 2,505m is the classic Bucegi challenge — a multi-hour route across the high plateau in genuinely alpine conditions, with sheer cliff drops on the eastern face, open views south across the Wallachian plain, and a landscape of alpine flowers and hardy grasses punctuated by the strange rock formations that give the massif its character. In June, the rhododendron bushes on the approaches bloom pink against the grey limestone in one of the most striking botanical displays in the Carpathians.
Bușteni and Sinaia are both easily reached from Bucharest by train — Sinaia in about 1.5 hours. The cable car from Bușteni reaches the plateau in minutes if you want a gentler introduction. The full ridge walk from Sinaia to Omu Peak and back is approximately 20km with 1,400m of elevation gain. The Babele and Sphinx are accessible on shorter routes suitable for casual hikers. The plateau is exposed — weather changes rapidly and wind chill is significant even in summer.
Whether or not Bran Castle was Bram Stoker's direct inspiration for Castle Dracula (the historical connection is debated — Stoker may never have visited Romania), the castle itself is one of the most visually dramatic fortresses in Europe and one that earns its reputation entirely on its own merits. Built in 1388 on a clifftop above the Bran Pass at the border between Transylvania and Wallachia, it rises from a limestone outcrop in a series of towers, battlements, and half-timbered upper floors that look precisely as a Gothic castle should look.
The interior is a labyrinth of small rooms, steep staircases, and secret passageways connecting towers at different levels — the castle was extensively modified over the centuries and the result is a genuinely complex and interesting building to explore. The collection inside documents the castle's real history, including its role as a royal residence for Queen Marie of Romania in the early 20th century, who decorated it with extraordinary taste. The views from the towers across the surrounding Carpathian foothills are exceptional.
Bran Castle is 30km from Brașov — easily reached by car or by the regular buses that run from Brașov's bus station. Most visitors combine a Bran Castle visit with the old walled city of Brașov itself, which is one of the best-preserved medieval city centres in Eastern Europe. The Black Church, the old city walls, and the Council Square are all worth time. Combine with the bear-watching tour (which also operates from Brașov) for a full Transylvania day.
The Saxon villages of southern Transylvania are among the most extraordinarily preserved medieval landscapes in Europe — communities founded by German colonists in the 12th and 13th centuries, each built around a fortified church, with characteristic long, narrow plots running back from the main street, farmhouses arranged around internal courtyards, and a way of life that has changed less than almost anywhere else on the continent. Staying with a local family in one of these villages is an experience that has no equivalent in Western Europe.
A traditional Saxon farmhouse stay means sleeping in a centuries-old building, eating food produced within walking distance — cured meats, homemade cheese, garden vegetables, and țuică, the Romanian plum brandy that accompanies everything — and experiencing the rhythms of agricultural life that still shape these communities. Geese and chickens wander the cobbled courtyards. The fortified churches, some of which date to the 13th century, stand at the centre of villages where a few hundred people still live as they always have.
Viscri — where Charles III (when he was Prince of Wales) owns a restored farmhouse and has been an active advocate for conservation — is the most famous but the most visited. Biertan (a UNESCO World Heritage site) has one of the most impressive fortified churches in Transylvania. Saschiz, Câlnic, and Richis are beautiful and far less visited. Each village has its own character and its own fortified church, and the landscape between them — rolling hills, orchards, flower meadows — is as beautiful as the architecture.
Romania is one of Europe's oldest and most underrated wine regions — a country that has been producing wine since at least 3000 BC, with indigenous grape varieties found nowhere else in the world and wine regions that stretch from the Carpathian foothills to the Black Sea coast. The tragedy of Romanian wine is that most of it never leaves the country, which means that visitors are essentially discovering a wine culture that the rest of the world doesn't yet know about.
The key varieties to seek out are Fetească Neagră (a rich, dark red with notes of plum and spice, often compared to Pinot Noir but with its own distinct character), Fetească Albă (a crisp, aromatic white), and Tămâioasă Românească (an intensely perfumed semi-sweet white sometimes called Romanian Muscat). The Dealu Mare region north of Bucharest is the most prestigious appellation for reds; Cotnari in Moldova is famous for sweet whites; and the Transylvanian hills around Blaj and Alba Iulia produce elegant, cool-climate whites from hillside vineyards that look out across the Carpathians.
The most atmospheric wine tastings happen in the actual cellars of estate wineries in the Dealu Mare and Transylvania regions — stone-vaulted spaces where barrels age in near-silence and the winemaker pours directly from the cask. Guided wine tours from Bucharest visit multiple estates in a single day. In Transylvania, the area around Blaj is particularly accessible from Sibiu or Sighișoara. September and October bring harvest season when the vineyard landscape is at its most beautiful — golden vines against the Carpathian backdrop.
Romania is a year-round destination but the experience varies dramatically by season. The Transfăgărășan road is only fully open July–October; the Saxon villages are beautiful in every season; bear watching runs April–October. Here's how the seasons break down:
