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Romania

5 city guides · Europe

Cities in Romania (5)

Europe
🇷🇴 Romania

Bucharest

Bucharest (București — population 1.8 million in the city, 2.3 million in the metro — the capital of Romania and the largest city in southeastern Europe outside of Istanbul) is a city of violent contrasts: the Belle Époque boulevards and fin-de-siècle palaces that earned the city the name "Little Paris" in the 1900s and 1930s, when Romanian aristocrats had their palaces built by French architects and the Calea Victoriei (Victory Avenue) was lined with the most fashionable shops and cafés in the region, exist beside the megalomaniac brutalism of Nicolae Ceaușescu's communist reconstruction: the Palace of Parliament (Palatul Parlamentului — the second-largest administrative building in the world by floor area, after the Pentagon: 3.77 million sq ft, 1,100 rooms, 12 stories above ground and 8 underground, built by 700 architects and 20,000 workers continuously from 1983 to 1989, unfinished at Ceaușescu's execution), for which an entire historic neighborhood (Uranus — 7 sq km, 40,000 residents forcibly relocated) was demolished. The result of this history is a city of extreme urban contrasts that no other European capital matches: the Orthodox churches of the 18th century hidden between modernist blocks, the Art Nouveau houses beside parking lots that were once neighborhoods, and the finest bohemian bar scene in Eastern Europe emerging in the ruins and interstitial spaces of the communist city. Bucharest's Floreasca and Dorobanți neighborhoods have become among the most sophisticated dining scenes in Europe, and the city's energy — driven by a large young population and a start-up culture — makes it one of the most surprising and rewarding European capitals to visit.

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Cluj-Napoca

Cluj-Napoca (population 330,000 city, 430,000 metropolitan area) is the most important city in Transylvania and the cultural, intellectual and economic capital of northwestern Romania. Known as "The City of Culture" and the unofficial capital of Transylvania (the most historically and culturally debated region in central Europe: Transylvania was part of the Roman province of Dacia, the Hungarian Kingdom (1003–1918), the Habsburg and Austro-Hungarian Empire (1699–1918) and Romania since 1918 — the most ethnically and linguistically complex region in Eastern Europe), Cluj-Napoca is home to the most important university in Romania (the Babeș-Bolyai University — the largest university in Romania with over 42,000 students) and the most important student population in the country (the most student-to-population ratio of any major Romanian city). The city is famous internationally for the UNTOLD music festival (the most important outdoor music festival in Romania and one of the most important in Europe) and the Electric Castle festival (the most unique castle electronic music festival in the world — held at the Bánffy Castle in Bonțida, 30km from Cluj). The historic center (the medieval core with the most important Gothic church in Romania — St. Michael's Church (1349–1487 CE) and the most important Hungarian landmark in Romania — the equestrian statue of Matthias Corvinus (the most celebrated Hungarian king, born in Cluj in 1443)) makes Cluj-Napoca the most historically layered city in Romania.

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🇷🇴 Romania

Craiova

Craiova (population 270,000) is the capital of Oltenia and the most important city in southwestern Romania — a vibrant university city with a strong industrial base (the most important Renault/Dacia automobile production hub in Romania outside Pitesti) and a surprisingly rich cultural heritage. The Nicolae Romanescu Park (one of the most beautiful landscaped parks in Romania and the Balkans — designed by French landscape architect Edouard Redont in 1901, 96 hectares), the Museum of Oltenia (one of the most comprehensive regional museums in Romania), the Art Museum of Craiova (housed in the spectacular Jean Mihail Palace — the most ornate Baroque palace in southwestern Romania, with an outstanding collection of Constantin Brancusi sculptures — the most important collection of Brancusi work in Romania outside Bucharest), and the lively student culture (40,000+ university students — the most youthful city in Oltenia) make Craiova a rewarding off-the-beaten-path destination in Romania.

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🇷🇴 Romania

Iasi

Iași (pronounced 'Yash') is Romania's second-largest city and the historical capital of Moldavia — a principality that was independent from 1346 until its union with Wallachia to form Romania in 1859 (an act formalized by Alexandru Ioan Cuza, whose statue dominates the city centre). With 380,000 people on the rolling hills of northeastern Romania, near the border with Moldova, Iași holds a disproportionate role in Romanian culture: it was the city where Mihai Eminescu (1850–1889) — the Romanian national poet, whose romantic verse established the literary standards of the modern language — spent most of his creative life (his statue is in the Copou Park, beside the linden tree under which he is said to have written). The Palace of Culture (Palatul Culturii — a neo-Gothic palace built 1906–1925 on the hill above the city centre, now housing four museums) is the iconic building. The city has 32 universities (the largest university centre in Romania by student population) and a cultural calendar that includes the Iași Theatre Festival and international classical music events. The surrounding Moldavian wine region (Cotnari, Iași County — one of the oldest wine appellations in Romania, producing the dessert wine Grasa de Cotnari since the 15th century) is accessible as a day trip. Best months: May–September.

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🇷🇴 Romania

Timisoara

Timișoara (Romanian: Timișoara; Hungarian: Temesvár; German: Temeschburg — the capital of Timiș County in western Romania, in the Banat historical region; population 320,000 city; the most multicultural city in Romania (the Banat region was historically the most ethnically mixed region of Central Europe — Romanians, Hungarians, Germans (Banat Swabians), Serbs, Bulgarians, Slovaks and Roma have lived in the Banat since the 18th-century Habsburg resettlement programme following the reconquest from the Ottomans in 1716); the European Capital of Culture 2023 (Timișoara held the title jointly with Elefsina (Greece) and Veszprém (Hungary) — the designation celebrated the multicultural heritage of the Banat region and the city's role as a centre of Central European cultural synthesis). Timișoara has the most revolutionary significance of any Romanian city: the Romanian Revolution of December 1989 (the revolution that overthrew the communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu — the only violent revolution in the 1989 wave of Eastern European revolutions) began in Timișoara on December 16-17, 1989, when protesters gathered at the Reformed Church on Timotei Cipariu Square to support the Hungarian-Romanian dissident pastor László Tőkés (who was facing forced eviction by the Securitate (the Romanian secret police)); the Timișoara protests spread when Securitate forces fired on the crowd, killing between 70-100 people (the first victims of the Romanian Revolution); the protests spread to Bucharest, and Ceaușescu fled on December 22, 1989 — he was captured and executed by firing squad on December 25, 1989 (the only communist leader executed in the 1989 revolutions). Timișoara also has the claim of being the first city in Continental Europe to use electrical street lighting (November 12, 1884 — the city illuminated its streets with incandescent bulbs four years before Paris) and the first city in Southeast Europe to operate an electric tram (1899).

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