Top 100 attractions in Romania

A medieval fortress built by the people of Brașov on a rock in the Bran Pass, later Queen Marie's summer residence and known around the world as “Dracula's Castle”.

John Hunyadi's Gothic residence, on a rock above the Zlaști river and reached by a long bridge on stone piers; inside, vaulted halls and towers from the 15th century.

Europe'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.

King Carol I's summer residence, built between 1873 and 1914 at the foot of the Bucegi Mountains in Sinaia, with carved wooden interiors, armouries and stained glass.

The church founded by Stephen the Great in 1488, painted on the outside with the Last Judgment on a background of "Voroneț blue"; a UNESCO site near Gura Humorului.

The cemetery in Săpânța with over 800 oak crosses painted blue, showing naive scenes from the lives of those buried there and witty epitaphs in verse; begun in 1935 by the craftsman Stan Ioan Pătraș.

The heaviest building in the world, raised by Ceaușescu in the 1980s on Spirii Hill; the guided tour passes through marble-clad state rooms hung with crystal chandeliers weighing several tonnes.

A salt mine worked from the Middle Ages until 1932 and turned into a spectacular underground park: a Ferris wheel, a lake with rowing boats, an amphitheatre and salt walls 120 m below ground, near Cluj.

The Unirea mine, dug between 1938 and 1970, is a string of 14 salt halls over 50 m high, 208 m underground, which you reach by minibus; 100 km from Bucharest.

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.

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.

The Neo-Romanian summer residence of the 'Nabob' Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino, with a ballroom lined with coats of arms, a terrace facing the Bucegi Mountains and the Nevermore Academy exterior from Wednesday.

The former Sighet prison, where the political elite of interwar Romania died, turned by Ana Blandiana and Romulus Rusan into the first museum of communism in Eastern Europe; over 50 cells made into exhibition rooms.

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.

Eclectic castle with towers and a moat, rebuilt in 1894–1896 by the Károlyi family in the middle of a three-century-old dendrological park; inside, period interiors, wax figures and African trophies.