Top 100 attractions in Romania

The ruins of a 14th-century fortress, probably built by the Genoese on a limestone hill above lakes Razim and Babadag, with one of the widest views in Dobruja.

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.

The Brâncovenesc palace built by Constantin Brâncoveanu in 1702, with its carved stone loggia, the old kitchen, a church from 1688 and a large lakeside park, 15 km from the centre of Bucharest.

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.

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 medieval peasant fortress on a rocky hill above Râșnov, looking out to the Bucegi and Piatra Craiului mountains; the upper enclosure is under restoration, but the Fortress Garden and Báthory Tower are open.

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.

A 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.

A narrow limestone gorge in the Piatra Mare Mountains near Brașov, with seven rock steps climbed on metal ladders and walkways; at the top you can ride a zip line back down.

A 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.

A 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.

The 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.

A moss-clad tufa waterfall whose water fans out in dozens of threads over green steps, in the beech forest of the Cheile Nerei–Beușnița National Park, an hour's walk beyond Ochiul Beiului Lake.

Romania's largest glacial lake, at 2,040 m in the heart of Retezat National Park; it can only be reached on foot, after a climb of about two hours from Poiana Pelegii.