Protected areas cover a sizeable part of the Carpathians, the Danube Delta and a few lowland and coastal zones. The national parks of Romania are almost all in the mountains: Retezat, the country's first national park, the Rodna Mountains, Piatra Craiului, Ceahlău, Cheile Nerei–Beușnița or Domogled–Valea Cernei; to these come the nature parks, such as Bucegi, Apuseni or the Iron Gates, and the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve, the largest protected area in the country. The rules are the same everywhere: marked paths, fires and tents only where allowed, nothing left behind.
You can get to know the parks without climbing a ridge. Bucura Lake is the heart of Retezat, Beușnița Waterfall gives its name to the park in the Banat, Cetățile Ponorului is the landmark of the Apuseni, and the Bucegi Sphinx is reached by cable car. The Danube Delta is explored by boat, while Lake Sfânta Ana, a nature reserve in Harghita, is the only volcanic lake in Romania.
Top 20Europe's largest wetland, a biosphere reserve and UNESCO site: channels, lakes, reed beds and over 300 bird species, from pelicans to egrets; visited by boat from Tulcea.
Top 100A glacial lake at 2,034 m in the Bâlea cirque of the Făgăraș Mountains, at the top of the Transfăgărășan; reachable by car in summer and by cable car all year round.
Top 100Romania's most visited cave: 488 m of lit galleries beneath the village of Chișcău, full of stalactites and stalagmites, with the bones of some 140 cave bears left where they were found.
Top 100Romania's first urban nature park: 183 ha of ponds, reed beds and willows inside an abandoned reservoir in southern Bucharest, home to over 180 bird species, otters and foxes, a few hundred metres from the tower blocks.
Top 100A roughly 90 m waterfall that drops in several tiers down a limestone wall in the Rodna Mountains, above the resort of Borșa; reached by chairlift and a short forest walk.
Top 100A small, easy-to-visit cave on the Rucăr–Bran corridor, in Piatra Craiului National Park: a dry gallery carved by the Dâmbovicioara stream, with about 250 m laid out and lit.
Top 100A natural dam lake formed in 1837, when a mountainside blocked the Bicaz valley; the trunks of the drowned forest still rise from the water, at the upper end of the Bicaz Gorge.
Top 100An 8 m conglomerate rock shaped by wind, frost and rain that, from certain angles, looks like a human head; it stands on the Bucegi plateau at 2,216 m, next to Babele.
Top 100A roughly 30 m, two-tiered waterfall at the foot of the Vlădeasa massif, on the Stanciului valley near Răchițele; the water fans out over the rock like a veil, and in winter the frozen wall is an ice-climbing spot.
Top 100The moss-covered tufa waterfall in the Miniș gorge, exactly on the 45th parallel and once famous worldwide; it partly collapsed in 2021 and is regenerating naturally, a few steps from the DN57B road.
Top 100Romania's largest natural bridge and the only one in the world carrying a public road: a 30 m limestone arch left standing after a cave roof collapsed, in the village of Ponoarele on the Mehedinți Plateau.
Top 100Romania's only volcanic lake: an almost round sheet of water in the Ciomatu crater, ringed by forest, with a Catholic chapel on the shore and the Mohoș peat bog in the neighbouring crater.
Top 100A cave in the Apuseni Mountains that holds one of the largest underground glaciers in the world: a block of ice over 10,000 years old, reached by stairs down a shaft 60 m across.
Top 100A roughly 15 m waterfall on the eastern slopes of the Bucegi Mountains, an hour's easy forest walk from Bușteni; the most visited waterfall in the massif and a classic outing on the Prahova Valley.
Top 100The stone mushrooms of the Bucegi plateau, at ~2,200 m: conglomerate rocks worn by wind, frost and rain, a few minutes from the Bușteni cable car and the Sphinx.
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