Discover Transylvania

About Transylvania

Transylvania is the misunderstood heart of Romania — the historic central region ringed by the Carpathian Mountains and shaped by centuries of overlapping Romanian, Hungarian Székely, and German Saxon cultures, each leaving distinct architectural and culinary traces. Forget the vampire jokes (Bram Stoker never actually visited; his Count Dracula is a composite of medieval Wallachian princes); the real Transylvania is one of Europe's most beautiful landscape regions, with seven UNESCO-listed Saxon fortified-church villages, the dramatic medieval citadels of Sighișoara and Sibiu (both walled medieval Saxon towns still inhabited), the bear-rich forested ridges of the Apuseni and Bucegi Mountains, and Braşov's spectacular Gothic Black Church. The bear and wolf populations are the largest in continental Europe; the Piatra Craiului and Retezat National Parks are some of the wildest hiking in the EU. Don't miss the spectacular Transăgărășan highway (recently dubbed 'the best road in the world' by Top Gear), the lonely painted monasteries of Bucovina to the northeast, Cluj-Napoca's young university buzz, and stays in restored Saxon village houses arranged by the Mihai Eminescu Trust, which has rescued dozens of crumbling traditional villages thanks to the active patronage of King Charles III, who owns and restored several Transylvanian properties himself.