Cluj-Napoca
Transylvania's largest city and a serious university town — the place to arrive, eat well and start west, rather than a sightseeing destination.
- Best for
- Arriving, eating, and the Apuseni to the west
- Suggested time
- One or two nights
- Getting there
- The region's busiest airport, and on the main line
What there is to see
In and around Cluj-Napoca. Filter by what you are interested in.
Turda Salt Mine
A medieval salt mine that has been a bomb shelter and a cheese store, and is now an enormous lit cavern with a boating lake at…
Scărișoara Ice Cave
An underground glacier in the Apuseni, roughly three and a half thousand years old, reached by a wooden staircase down a shaft.
Where to go next
The background
Cluj is the largest city in Transylvania and it does not behave like the rest of the region. It is a university city — the Jesuit college that became its university was founded in 1581 — and the student population gives it a food and music scene that Sibiu and Brașov, for all their looks, do not match.
What to see, briefly
St Michael’s is the Gothic church on the main square, with a tower of 76 metres erected in 1862 — the tallest church tower in Transylvania. The equestrian statue in front of it is Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, who was born in this city in 1443 in a house that still stands a short walk away.
Those two facts sitting in one square are most of what you need to know about Cluj: it is a place with a Hungarian, Romanian, Saxon and Jewish history layered on top of a Roman one, and every one of those layers is still argued about.
Why base here
For the airport, and for the west. The Apuseni mountains, Turda’s salt mine and the villages under Piatra Secuiului are all short runs from Cluj, and none of them has a base of its own worth using instead.
Prefer to have the route organised for you?
Guided private trips and custom itineraries are arranged externally, with a local driver-guide.
View private tours