Visit Cluj-Napoca

First impressions of Cluj-Napoca

Cluj-Napoca is the unofficial capital of Transylvania and Romania's most cosmopolitan city outside Bucharest — a thriving university town of around 320,000 people in northwestern Romania (close to the Hungarian border) with one of the largest student populations per capita in Europe (over 100,000 students at six universities), which gives the city a young, energetic, tech-startup feel quite distinct from anywhere else in the country. The medieval centre revolves around the vast Unification Square (Piața Unirii), dominated by the dramatic 14th-century Gothic St Michael's Church and the equestrian statue of Matthias Corvinus (King of Hungary, born here in 1443). Walk the cobbled side streets behind for the colourful baroque burgher houses and the wonderful little Babeş-Bolyai University courtyards (the only multilingual university in Romania, teaching in Romanian, Hungarian, German, and English). The brilliant Cluj-Napoca Art Museum and the moving Pharmacy Museum (Romania's oldest, in a 15th-century building) round out the central highlights. Beyond, the regenerated Centrul Vechi (Old Town) is one of Romania's best food and bar quarters; Cluj also hosts the country's biggest summer music festivals (Untold and Electric Castle, both with huge international line-ups). Don't miss the Hoia-Baciu forest 8km west — famously haunted, called 'the Bermuda Triangle of Transylvania' — and the spectacular Turța Gorge.