Attractions in Romania

Romania's largest year-round spa resort, 8 km from Oradea: thermal springs of up to 49 °C, open-air baths that run all winter and a reserve of water lilies and thermal lotuses.

Romania'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.

A pentagonal bastion fortress built by the princes of Transylvania in the 16th–17th centuries: five bastions, a princely palace housing the Oradea City Museum, and courtyards you can walk into freely.

A karst complex on the Padiș Plateau: three huge sinkholes with walls over 200 m high and a portal over 70 m tall where the Cetăților stream vanishes into the mountain. Seen from a marked hiking loop, not a show cave.

A waterfall of about 80 m on the Bohodei stream, below the peak of the same name, regarded as the tallest in the Apuseni Mountains; reached on a demanding loop from Pietroasa with chain-equipped rock sections.

An ice cave in the forests of the Galbena Valley near Padiș, reached on foot along a marked trail. Around midday, light pours in through a hole in the roof and falls on the ice.

A multi-tiered waterfall on the Iad Valley, tumbling between huge boulders right beside the road from Stâna de Vale to Lake Leșu; you see it from a metal viewing platform or from below, by the water.

One of Romania's oldest show caves, with a 16 m high entrance arch, vast chambers on two levels and one of the largest bat colonies in the country.

A 20–25 m, two-tier waterfall hidden in a narrow valley of giant boulders and spruce on the western slope of the Vlădeasa massif; reached on foot from Stâna de Vale along a marked trail of about 8 km.

A wild waterfall on the Ieduțul stream, hidden among ferns and fir trees above the Iad Valley, a quarter of an hour's walk through the forest from the road between Stâna de Vale and Lake Leșu.

A cave with an entrance more than 30 m high facing the Crișul Repede, reached over a suspension bridge and inhabited by people as far back as the Neolithic.

The pass where the DN75 crosses the Bihor Mountains at 1,160 m, between Nucet and Arieșeni: the Vârtop holiday village, ski slopes and trails to Groapa Ruginoasă and Piatra Grăitoare.