Transylvania

Transylvania is a plateau ringed by mountains in the centre of Romania, and the ring is the reason it looks and feels distinct from everywhere else in the country. The Carpathians curve around it on three sides, which for most of the last thousand years meant that getting in was difficult and staying separate was easy.

Why the towns look German

From the twelfth century the Hungarian crown invited German-speaking settlers into the region to hold and work its southern frontier. They became known as the Transylvanian Saxons, and they built the seven fortified towns that gave Transylvania its German name — Siebenbürgen, seven citadels. Sibiu, Brașov and Sighișoara are the three of those seven that survive best, and the reason each has a walled centre, a guild square and a Lutheran church at the middle of it.

The Saxon population had largely left by the end of the twentieth century. What they built stayed, and it is now the region's principal draw.

The fortified villages

Outside the towns, the Saxons fortified their village churches rather than their villages — ringing the church with walls, storerooms and towers so that a community could withdraw into it when raiders came. Hundreds were built between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, and a substantial number still stand.

Seven are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list as Villages with Fortified Churches in Transylvania: Biertan, Câlnic, Dârjiu, Prejmer, Saschiz, Valea Viilor and Viscri. Biertan was inscribed on its own in 1993; the other six were added as an extension in 1999.

They are a selection, not the total. Part of the pleasure of driving the Saxon villages is that the unlisted ones are often empty, and you will have the churchyard to yourself.

The three towns

Sibiu is the easiest to arrive in and the best base — a compact pedestrian centre built around three linked squares, with Romania's oldest museum on the main one.

Brașov sits directly beneath the mountains, which gives it the most dramatic setting of the three and puts Bran and Peleș within an easy day.

Sighișoara is the smallest and the most intact: a hill citadel of coloured houses inside its walls, with a covered wooden stair up to the church on the hill. The house on the citadel square is traditionally identified as the birthplace of Vlad III, the prince the Dracula story borrowed a name from.

The mountains

The Carpathians are not scenery here, they are the boundary. The Făgăraș range carries Romania's highest peaks and the Transfăgărășan, the mountain road that draws most of the summer traffic. Piatra Craiului is the ridge walk. Both are genuine mountain environments with genuine mountain weather, and the high road is seasonal.

How long it takes

Three days is enough for one town and the villages around it. A week lets you link all three towns, drive at least one mountain road, and still spend an afternoon somewhere without a plan — which is the version of this trip most people describe afterwards as the good one.