Attractions in Romania

The ruins of the oldest city on Romanian soil, a Greek colony founded by Miletus in the 7th century BC on the shore of Lake Sinoe, with the site museum alongside.

The temple-castle built by Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu in memory of his daughter Iulia, to plans he claimed she gave him in spiritualist séances; today a memorial museum.

Romania'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.

A heliothermal salt lake in Sovata, formed in 1875 over a salt massif: beneath a thin layer of fresh water the salt water goes above 40 °C in summer; a lido runs on the shore in season.

A medieval Moldavian fortress on a rocky spur above Târgu Neamț, built by the Mușatin princes and strengthened by Stephen the Great, which held out against Mehmed II's siege in 1476.

A working salt mine near Râmnicu Vâlcea that you enter by bus through a tunnel: huge galleries with swirling salt walls, sports courts, an ice rink and the country's largest underground church.

A masterpiece of Transylvanian Secession architecture, completed in 1913, with a gold-ground mosaic façade, the Hall of Mirrors and its 12 stained-glass windows, a concert hall with an organ and the Mureș County Museum's art galleries.

Queen Marie's Art Nouveau castle, built between 1899 and 1902 next to Peleș, with the Gold Room, the Gold Bedroom and interiors designed by the queen herself; her heart is kept here.

One 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.

A 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.

A Saxon peasant fortress climbing in tiers up a basalt hill above the town of Rupea, first recorded in 1324 and restored in 2010–2013, with wide views over the Transylvanian hills.

The capital of the Dacian kingdom, hidden in the beech forests of the Orăștie Mountains: the walls of Decebalus's fortress, the paved road and the sacred area with andesite and limestone sanctuaries, a UNESCO site.

An 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.

Constantin Brâncuși's round stone table with 12 hourglass seats, in the park on the banks of the Jiu: the western end of the Heroes' Way ensemble, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A thermal and wellness complex on the edge of Bucharest, on the DN1: geothermal pools under a glass dome full of palm trees, water slides, saunas and a sandy beach open in summer.