The western frontier — where Romanian, Hungarian, Serbian, and German cultures have shared the same streets for centuries, making Timișoara one of Europe's most quietly cosmopolitan cities.
The first city in the world to have electric street lighting, and the city where the 1989 revolution that ended communism in Romania began. The Orthodox Cathedral, the Opera House, and the National Theatre all face each other across Piața Victoriei — a square that has held the memory of 1989 with quiet dignity ever since.
A limestone plateau riddled with caves — Scărișoara holds one of Europe's largest underground glaciers, a mass of ancient ice 3,500 years old. The Focul Viu cave has ice crystals that look like flames in torchlight. Above ground, the plateau villages of the Moți people are among Romania's most isolated and least visited.
An architectural surprise: Oradea has one of the highest concentrations of Art Nouveau buildings in Eastern Europe, built at the turn of the 20th century when the city was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Many have been restored in the last decade and the old town now rewards an afternoon of slow walking.