Attractions in Romania

A 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.

The Baroque palace of Governor Samuel von Brukenthal on Sibiu's Great Square has housed Romania's oldest museum since 1817: a gallery of European painting with van Eyck, Titian and Bruegel.

The 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.

Romania's largest open-air museum, in the Dumbrava forest outside Sibiu: over 300 houses, mills, workshops and wooden churches brought from across the country, along ~10 km of paths.

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 biggest tiered waterfall, dropping about 60 m over the lower step of the Bâlea cirque in the Făgăraș Mountains; an hour's walk up from the Bâlea Cascadă chalet on the Transfăgărășan.

The main square of old Sibiu, about 140 by 90 metres, enclosed by merchants' houses with "eyes" in their roofs, by the Brukenthal Palace, the Jesuit church and the Council Tower.

A spa resort 15 km from Sibiu with salt lakes formed where old salt mines caved in: in summer you swim in water that keeps you afloat, between white banks of salt.

The zoo in the Dumbrava forest, opened in 1929 and considered the first in Romania, with tigers, lions, jaguars, white wolves, bears and lakes where you can go boating.