Description

Romania: Transylvania Travel Guide

This new, 4th edition of Bradt’s Romania: Transylvania travel guide remains the only standalone English language guide to this legendary and enchanting region.

The region has continued to develop its tourism offer, with improvements to the transport infrastructure, in particular to the regional airports within Transylvania, which offer more direct flights to the UK and other western European destinations, limited modernisation of the railway system, and the completion of some new motorway routes, such as that between Sibiu and Deva. A number of really striking new accommodation options have appeared since the last edition: for example the sustainable guesthouse in Valea Zalanului owned by Charles III, and the mountaintop retreat of Raven’s Nest in the Apuseni Mountains.

More attractions have opened up, such as Baroque palaces formerly owned by Hungarian aristocrats, seized under the Communist regime and now being restored by the descendants of their original owners. And the region is developing its offer for new types of tourism, such as summer rock festivals, notably the Untold Festival at Cluj and Electric Castle Festival at Bontida.

Transylvania, literally the ‘land beyond the forest’, is a wild, wooded, intensely romantic region, filled with mountains, gorges and valleys, myths and legends, dragons, bears, wolves and vampires. Bram Stoker called it ‘one of the wildest and least-known parts of Europe’ a description which remains true today. One of the most beautiful regions in central Europe and home to three UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Transylvania preserves its cultural and artistic treasures in a unique landscape, bordered on three sides by the Carpathian Mountains. The hay meadows of the lower Carpathians form a man-made, high nature-value grassland ecosystem of extraordinary diversity, offering a beautiful display of wild flowers. The Carpathians are home too to lynx, wild boar, and one of Europe’s largest populations of brown bear.

Other natural phenomena include the Scarisoara ice cave in the Apuseni Mountains and the Sfanta Ana volcanic crater lake in Harghita.

Whatever your interests, with Bradt’s Romania: Transylvania, you can discover all of the region’s many and varied attractions.