Romania 7 Day Itinerary: Transylvania, Brasov, Sighisoara and Sibiu

About 60 lei for the standard tour, 1h30, entry from Strada Izvor and only with a passport. Buy the ticket at the desk on the day, or book by phone 24 hours ahead: the visit is always guided and in a group.

Ceausescu raised more than 3,000 rooms here in the 1980s, demolishing a whole district to open the avenue you see from the balcony. The tour covers a fraction of the building and still runs 2 kilometres of corridor.

Free, 20 minutes, 1.2 kilometres from the Parliament. Six white floors wrap a central void inside a 1903 building that was once a bank and then a warehouse. The top floor cafe opens onto Lipscani street, in the middle of the Old Town.

40 minutes, 900 metres from the bookshop. The walk-in visit is short and cheap, and the round hall carries a 75 metre painted frieze that tells the history of Romania in a single loop.

The acoustics are why this is home to the George Enescu Philharmonic. If there is a concert on your night, go to the concert: it often costs less than a guided tour elsewhere, and visits close during rehearsals.

Free, 30 minutes, 2 hours from Bucharest on the DN1. Founded in 1695, it gave the town its name and sits at the car park where the 15 minute walk up to the castle starts.

50 lei for the basic tour and 120 lei for the Grand Tour, plus 35 lei to take photos, 1h45 with the queue. Closed Monday and Tuesday, and in 2026 it also closes from 2 November to 1 December for conservation: check the date before planning the day.

It is an 1883 neo-Renaissance palace, the first in Europe with its own electricity, and the carved wood interior is what justifies the trip. The Grand Tour adds the second floor and only pays off if you like interiors.

Sinaia to Brasov is 45 minutes on the DN1, with the whole Prahova Valley through the window.

Open square, 1 hour, right after check-in. The old town hall in the middle dates from 1420 and now holds the city museum; around it are the painted facades and the terraces where Brasov has dinner.

Everything on the next day starts here: the Black Church is 200 metres away and Rope Street 300.

15 lei, 1 hour, open Tuesday to Saturday. The name comes from the 1689 fire that blackened the walls of the largest Gothic church between Vienna and Istanbul.

Two things to look for inside: the 1839 Buchholz organ, with almost 4,000 pipes, and the collection of Anatolian rugs hanging in the galleries, brought back by Saxon merchants. In summer there are organ recitals in the late afternoon.

Free, 15 minutes, 250 metres from the church. It is one of the narrowest streets in Europe, opened in the 17th century as a firefighters passage. Two photos and it is over, but it sits exactly on the way to the bastion.

10 lei, 45 minutes, 300 metres from Rope Street. It is the best preserved medieval bastion in Brasov, built in 1450, with wooden galleries on four levels.

Inside there is a model of the fortified city in 1600, which makes sense of everything you walked in the morning. The acoustics are so good that the courtyard hosts opera in summer.

30 lei one way and 50 lei return, 2 hours with the walk at the top, 500 metres from the bastion. The cabin climbs to 950 metres in 3 minutes, and the white city sign stands up there.

If you would rather walk, the zigzag trail takes about an hour up and you ride down. It runs daily, with a technical break on Monday mornings.

50 lei, 1h30 including the 2 kilometre walk, 30 minutes by car from Brasov. It opens Tuesday to Sunday and only takes visitors in the morning, at fixed times, so the animals are not disturbed: tickets go on sale 10 days ahead online and sell out fast in summer.

More than a hundred brown bears rescued from restaurant and circus cages live here across 69 hectares of oak forest. Children under 5 are not allowed in.

100 lei for adults, 1h30, 25 minutes from Zarnesti. Open every day, from 9am Tuesday to Sunday and only from noon on Monday, and anyone arriving after 11am queues.

Vlad Tepes probably never lived here: the Dracula link is 20th century marketing, and Bram Stoker never set foot in Romania. What the castle really has is Queen Maries 1920s restoration, with furniture, narrow passages and an inner courtyard worth the visit. The souvenir market at the entrance is expensive and skippable.

Garden open and free, 45 minutes, 15 minutes from Bran. The citadel has been closed for restoration since 2022 and reopening, in stages, is planned for 2028: for now you can only walk the garden and the outside. It is still worth the stop, because the view from the hill reaches the Bucegi massif and the whole Brasov valley.

15 lei, 1h30, 1h40 from Brasov, with the last 8 kilometres on a broken road. The white church dates from the 12th century, joined the Unesco list in 1999, and the ticket covers the tower, the museum and the exhibition.

The village has a single street, painted Saxon houses and horse carts still in use. King Charles bought and restored a house here, which put Viscri on the map: arrive early, because the tour buses unload after 11am.

Viscri to Sighisoara is another 50 minutes.

50 lei with the history museum, 1 hour, right after check-in. The tower dates from 1360, stands 64 metres tall and keeps the 1648 mechanism with the wooden figures that turn at midnight.

The balcony at the top is the best view of the citadel, the only inhabited one in Europe and a World Heritage site since 1999. The house where Vlad Tepes was born is on the square next door and is now a tourist restaurant: read the plaque and move on.

Free, 15 minutes, 200 metres from the tower. The wooden tunnel was built in 1642 so children could reach the school on top of the hill even in snow. There are 175 steps and the climb takes 5 minutes.

About 15 lei, 45 minutes, at the top of the staircase. It is a Gothic church from 1345, with frescoes rediscovered under the whitewash and a crypt, the only one in a Transylvanian church.

Next to it lies the Saxon cemetery, whose German headstones tell on their own the story of the community that left the country after 1990. It closes early outside summer.

1h15 for the visit, 1 hour of mountain road from Sighisoara. It was the Saxon bishops seat for 300 years and is the largest of the Unesco fortified churches, with three rings of wall and towers linked by covered stairs.

The famous piece is the sacristy door from 1515, with a system of 19 locks worked by a single key. The other is the marital tower, where couples who wanted a divorce were locked in together for two weeks, with one plate and one bed.

Biertan to Sibiu is another hour.

A token ticket of a few lei, 40 minutes, right after check-in. The 1588 tower stands between the Large Square and the Small Square, and the top floor shows both squares and the roofs with their oval dormers, the eyes of Sibiu.

The stairs are narrow and there is no lift. The Large Square below hosts the Christmas market and the theatre festival in June.

Free, 15 minutes, 100 metres from the tower. Built in 1859, it was the first cast iron bridge in the country and links the Small Square to the lower town. Legend says it creaks when somebody lies while standing on it.

A cheap ticket for the church plus an extra for the tower, 1 hour, 150 metres from the Large Square. The Gothic church dates from 1520 and holds the tomb of Mihnea cel Rau, son of Vlad Tepes, murdered at its door in 1510.

The tower climb is on wooden stairs and ends at the highest viewpoint in the centre. Look for the 1445 Crucifixion fresco behind the organ as well.

Free, 30 minutes, 300 metres from the Gothic cathedral. It was built between 1902 and 1906 after the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and the interior is covered in frescoes on a blue and gold ground. Cover your shoulders to go in.

50 lei, 2h30, 10 minutes by car from the centre and on the way to the airport. It is the largest open air museum in Europe: 400 houses, mills, churches and workshops brought from all over Romania and rebuilt across 96 hectares of woodland.

Rent a bicycle at the gate, because the paths add up to kilometres. Leave the last hours of the day for it: Sibiu airport is 8 minutes away, with daily flights to Munich on Lufthansa and to Vienna on Austrian.