Three days in Cluj-Napoca: Transylvania's least touristed city, and its best night out
Two nights in the old centre, half a day underground at Turda, and no coach parties anywhere.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Cluj-Napoca
- Places
- 8 across 3 days
Kolozsvar to Hungarians, Klausenburg to Saxons, Cluj to everybody who lives here now. It is the unofficial capital of Transylvania, home to the largest university in the country, and the place where Romanians and Hungarians have been sharing a main square for six centuries with varying degrees of grace.
None of that puts it on the standard tour. Coach itineraries run Brasov, Sighisoara, Sibiu and then stop, which means Cluj has the best restaurants and the cheapest good hotels in Transylvania and almost none of the queues. On a Thursday night the bars around Museum Square are full of people who live here.
The one thing outside the city worth a morning is the salt mine at Turda, half an hour south: a working mine until the 1930s, now lit like a spaceship, with a rowing lake at the bottom of the shaft.
Highlights
- A 15th century Gothic church, and the highest spire in the country, standing in the middle of the main square
- Turda salt mine, over a hundred metres down, with a Ferris wheel and rowing boats in it
- Museum Square and the streets off it, which is where Cluj actually eats and drinks
- The Transylvanian ethnographic collection, and its open air annexe of village buildings
- Cetatuia hill at sunset, with the whole city and the hills behind it
Where to stay
Cluj-Napoca, two nights
Stay between Union Square and Museum Square. That is a five minute radius covering the churches, the museums, the restaurants and most of the bars, and it is where you will spend both evenings.
Prices here are noticeably below Brasov or Sibiu for the same standard of room, which is the quiet advantage of a city that tourism has not found yet.
Day by day
Day 1 in Cluj-Napoca
Union Square, the Gothic church and the bars behind it
Cluj is organised around one large square with a very large church in the middle of it, and a smaller square two streets north where everybody goes in the evening. The first afternoon is about learning that geometry.
The church is the thing to see properly. It went up through the 15th century, the murals inside are contemporary with it, and the spire was bolted on in the 1800s and is now the tallest of any church in the country.
Then walk north into Museum Square, which is a cobbled rectangle with a Franciscan monastery at one end and terraces down both sides. That is where the evening happens.
- 14:30
Union Square
ArchitectureThe main square, with the church in the middle, a baroque palace along the south side and a scrap of excavated Roman street under glass in one corner. Cluj began as Napoca, a Roman town, and this is the proof.
- 15:45
St. Michael's Church
ReligiousGothic, enormous, and one of the most important medieval buildings in Transylvania. The 15th century murals survive in places and the neo-Gothic tower added in the 1800s is the tallest church tower in Romania.
- 17:00
The Museum Square
VisitTwo minutes north, the older square, with a Franciscan monastery at the top of it and the best concentration of terraces in the city down both sides.
- 19:30
Zama
EatTransylvanian cooking done properly rather than reverently: sour soups, smoked things, plum everything. Book at weekends.
With more time: The bars off Museum Square and along Strada Potaissa run late every night of the week during term. One of them is furnished entirely in cardboard, which is the sort of thing a city with 100,000 students produces.
Day 2 in Cluj-Napoca
Down the salt mine, then up the citadel hill
Salt has been cut out of the hill at Turda since Roman times and industrially until the 1930s, when the mine closed and was left alone. What somebody then did with it is hard to describe: the main chamber is lit like a film set, with a Ferris wheel on the floor of it, a mini golf course, and a lower shaft holding a lake with rowing boats on it.
It is cold down there, around 12 C all year, and the descent is a long staircase or a lift. Take a jacket even in August.
Back in Cluj, spend the afternoon on the Transylvanian ethnographic collection, then walk up the citadel hill for the view as the light goes. It is fifteen minutes of stairs from the river and worth every one of them.
- 09:30
Salt Mine of Turda
OtherA closed salt mine reopened as something between a museum and a fairground, over a hundred metres underground. Allow two hours plus travel, and bring a layer: it stays around 12 C down there whatever the surface is doing.
- 14:00
Lunch back in the centre
EatEat when you get back rather than at the mine, where the options are a car park kiosk and not much else.
- 15:15
Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania
CultureCostume, tools, painted furniture and household objects from across Transylvania, with an open air annexe of real village buildings a short bus ride north of the centre.
- 18:30
Cetățuia Fortress
VisitThe Austrian citadel above the river, of which very little survives except the ramparts and the view. Go an hour before sunset; the whole city lays itself out below you.
With more time: With a car, the gorge west of Turda is a two hour walk between limestone walls and makes a much better full day out than the mine alone. Without one, it is difficult to reach.
Day 3 in Cluj-Napoca
A baroque palace and a pharmacy with mummy powder in it
The last morning is two buildings on and just off the main square, both small, both open mid morning.
The palace on the south side of the square was built in the 1770s for a Hungarian noble family and now holds the national art collection: Transylvanian panel painting, a good 19th century Romanian gallery, and a courtyard worth sitting in.
The pharmacy museum, a hundred metres away, is the more memorable of the two and takes twenty minutes.
- 10:00
Bánffy Palace
HistoricBuilt between 1774 and 1775 and the best baroque building in the city, now the art museum. Go up the main staircase even if you skip the galleries.
- 11:45
Pharmaceutical Museum
VisitIn the house that held the city's first pharmacy, a collection of what people were sold as medicine: powdered mummy at eye watering prices, love elixirs, and a reconstructed 18th century dispensary in the back room.
With more time: If you have longer, the history museum on Strada Constantin Daicoviciu covers Transylvania from the Dacians onward and is a useful frame for anything else you do in the region.
Before you go
Getting in
Cluj has the busiest airport in Romania after Bucharest, with cheap direct flights from a long list of European cities, and it is by far the easiest way in. The airport is about 8 km east of the centre with a frequent bus.
Overland, buses run hourly to Sibiu in around 4 hours and there are direct trains to Brasov and Bucharest, though the Bucharest train is a long night. If you are combining Transylvanian towns, fly into Cluj and out of Bucharest rather than doubling back.
Getting around
The old centre is small and flat and you will walk all of it. Trams and buses cover the rest; the only journeys you actually need are the airport and the trip out to Turda.
Turda is served by regular minibuses from the Cluj bus station, taking about 45 minutes, and a taxi there and back with an hour or two of waiting is cheap split between two people.
When to go
May to early October. The student term is what gives Cluj its atmosphere, so July and August are quieter here rather than busier, and the city can feel oddly emptied out in high summer.
The film festival in June and the electronic music festival in August both fill every room in the city, so check dates before booking.
Cluj is the Transylvanian city that is not selling you Transylvania. There is no Dracula merchandise, no coach park, and no restaurant with a man in a cape outside it, and what you get instead is a Gothic church, two languages, a very good dinner and a salt mine that beggars belief.
Two nights, and use the evenings.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is Cluj worth visiting if I am already doing Brasov and Sibiu?
- Yes, and for the opposite reason to those two. Brasov and Sibiu are preserved old towns you look at; Cluj is a working city you spend time in. It also has the region's best food and its only real nightlife, and it is where the cheap flights land.
- How do I get to the Turda salt mine without a car?
- Minibuses leave the Cluj bus station regularly and take about 45 minutes, dropping you near the mine entrance. Alternatively a taxi there, an agreed wait, and back costs little between two people. Either way it is a half day, not a full one.
- Is two nights enough?
- For the city, yes. The second night exists so you can give a morning to Turda without cutting the old centre short. A third night only earns its place if you want the gorge or the villages west of the city, which need a car.
- What language will I need?
- None. Romanian and Hungarian are both spoken here and English is close to universal among younger people, which in a university city is most of the people you will deal with.