Places of worship are perhaps the most widespread kind of attraction, and each region has a church type of its own. The most sought-after monasteries in Romania, those with painted outer walls, are the speciality of Bukovina, built in the 15th and 16th centuries under Stephen the Great and his successors; Maramureș has kept its wooden churches with tall spires; southern Transylvania has the fortified churches of the Saxons, and Oltenia the Brâncovenesc monasteries. Many are on the UNESCO World Heritage list and almost all are still in use: visitors are asked to dress modestly and keep quiet.
In Bukovina, Voroneț Monastery and Sucevița Monastery are among the best-known painted churches. In Maramureș, the Bârsana Wooden Church is a good starting point. Transylvania offers the Biertan Fortified Church and the Black Church in Brașov, while Oltenia has Horezu Monastery, founded by Constantin Brâncoveanu.
Top 20The church founded by Stephen the Great in 1488, painted on the outside with the Last Judgment on a background of "Voroneț blue"; a UNESCO site near Gura Humorului.
Top 20The Saxon church on the hill in the middle of the village, guarded by three rings of walls and towers; inside, Romania's largest polyptych altarpiece and a door with a lock from 1515.
Top 100The Orthodox cathedral inside Alba Carolina Fortress, built in 1921–1922 for the coronation of Ferdinand and Marie as king and queen of Greater Romania, with a 58 m bell tower and royal portraits in fresco.
Top 100A 13th-century count's residence, bought by the Saxon villagers in 1430 and turned into a peasant fortress: a Romanesque keep, two rings of walls and a chapel, in a valley near Sebeș.
Top 100Romania's oldest and longest cathedral, Romanesque and Gothic, at the heart of the Alba Carolina Fortress; it holds the tomb of John Hunyadi and the first Renaissance chapel in Transylvania.
Top 100The only Székely and Unitarian church in the UNESCO fortified-church site: a Gothic church with 1419 frescoes of the legend of Saint Ladislaus, whose fortress villagers still use to store their bacon.
Top 100One of the largest Saxon fortified churches: a Gothic church on a cross-shaped plan, ringed by an oval wall with over 270 refuge rooms reached by timber galleries.
Top 100A Late Gothic Saxon church beside the DN13, with a bell tower modelled on Sighișoara's Clock Tower; on the hill above the village stand the walls of a 14th-century peasant fortress.
Top 100The Saxon church in a vineyard valley near Mediaș, with its choir turned into a defence tower, an almost intact oval wall and a wood-and-iron portcullis that has survived for centuries.
Top 100A small white church on the hill above the village, grown from a 12th-century Romanesque chapel and ringed by walls, towers and grain galleries, in a Saxon village that has survived almost intact.
A 14th-century Gothic church built by the noble Apafi family, with the largest ensemble of Gothic frescoes in Transylvania and a polyptych altarpiece that has stood in place for more than five centuries.
The Movilă family's fortified monastery, built in the 1580s among the hills of Bukovina, with a church painted almost entirely inside and out and the famous "Ladder of Virtues"; a UNESCO site.
A Romanesque basilica from the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, left almost unaltered, on the rocky top of St Michael's Hill, ringed by a defensive wall and looking out to the Făgăraș Mountains.
Romania's largest Gothic church, built by the Saxons of Brașov between 1383 and 1477; inside are the 1839 Buchholz organ and a rare collection of Anatolian carpets.
The church built in 1530 by chancellor Toader Bubuiog under Petru Rareș, painted outside in shades of red, with an open porch and Vasile Lupu's tower; a UNESCO site.
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