Three days in Timisoara: the city where Romania stopped being communist
Two nights in the old Habsburg core, three baroque squares, and the streets where December 1989 began.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Timișoara
- Places
- 8 across 3 days
Banat was the eastern edge of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and Timisoara was its administrative capital. That is why a city in western Romania has Viennese street plans, three cathedrals of three different rites within a few hundred metres, and a nickname, Little Vienna, that it has never quite let go of.
It is also the city that went first. On 16 December 1989 a crowd gathered outside a Hungarian pastor's flat to stop him being evicted, did not disperse, and within a week the government had fallen. The squares where that happened are the same squares you will be drinking coffee in, and the memorial museum in the middle of them is one of the best things in the country.
Two nights is enough, and the city is flat, compact and almost entirely walkable. It held the European Capital of Culture year in 2023 and spent the money on restoring the facades, so it looks considerably better now than the guidebooks of ten years ago suggest.
Highlights
- Union Square, with a Catholic cathedral at one end and a Serbian Orthodox one facing it
- The revolution memorial, which explains the seven days of December 1989 without flattering anybody
- Rows of Secession facades in yellow, green and rose, most of them repainted in the last few years
- Huniade Castle, begun in 1443 and the oldest building in the city
- A basement museum of communist household objects underneath a very scruffy bar
Where to stay
Timisoara, two nights
Stay in the Cetate district, the old walled core, between Union Square and Victory Square. Everything below is a walk from there and the restaurants are on your doorstep.
Rooms here are cheap by European standards even after the Capital of Culture year, and a good deal cheaper than Cluj or Brasov for the same thing.
Day by day
Day 1 in Timișoara
Union Square, and two cathedrals facing each other down
The old town is a Habsburg grid laid over a demolished Ottoman fortress, and Union Square is its centre: a wide baroque rectangle of pastel palaces with cafe tables across the middle of it.
The two churches at either end are the point. A Catholic cathedral built for the Habsburg administration stands at the south, and a Serbian Orthodox cathedral built for the community that was here before them faces it from the north. Nowhere else in Romania puts the argument that plainly.
Spend the first evening at the tables in between. That is what the square is for and what everybody who lives here does with it.
- 14:30
Union Square
ArchitectureThe baroque heart of the old town, ringed by 18th century palaces and a plague column in the middle. Almost all of it was repainted for 2023 and it now looks the way it was meant to.
- 15:45
St. George's Cathedral
ReligiousThe Catholic cathedral at the south end of the square, Viennese baroque inside and out, with a startlingly tall pink and white facade. Free, quiet, and worth twenty minutes.
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- 16:45
Serbian Orthodox Cathedral
ReligiousFacing it across the square, the Serbian cathedral: darker, gold, thick with icons, and a reminder that the Serbian community here predates the Austrians.
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- 19:30
Dinner on Union Square
EatAnywhere with tables out. This is one of the few squares in Romania where the restaurants on it are actually where locals eat.
With more time: Walk five minutes north to the old defensive bastion afterwards; the brick vaults underneath it hold bars and small shops and are open late.
Day 2 in Timișoara
December 1989, in the order it happened
Today is one story told across three places, and it is worth doing in sequence rather than by convenience.
It began in the Elisabetin district, at a Reformed church, when a crowd formed to stop the eviction of a Hungarian pastor and refused to go home. It spread to the main square, where the army fired on demonstrators. Within a week Ceausescu had fled Bucharest.
The memorial museum between the two is the part to give real time to. It is unsentimental, it uses the footage the state television did not show, and it does not pretend the aftermath was clean.
- 09:30
Victory Square
ArchitectureThe long square between the opera house and the cathedral, where the crowds gathered and were fired on. The balcony demonstrators declared Timisoara a free city from is on the opera house.
- 10:45
Revolution Memorial
VisitA small museum in a former barracks that covers the seven days from the first protest to the fall of the government, with contemporary film and the documents from both sides. Ask for the English commentary.
- 13:00
Lunch in Cetate
EatBack towards the old town, where the choice is wide and the prices halve the moment you leave the main squares.
- 14:30
Maria Square
ArchitectureWhere it actually started, on 16 December 1989, outside the pastor's flat by the Reformed church. There is a statue of the Virgin, a plaque, and otherwise an ordinary square that people cross on the way to the tram.
With more time: Ten minutes further out, in the basement of a deliberately shabby bar with a garden, somebody has piled up every household object the communist period produced: radios, vacuum flasks, wall carpets. Bring a coin for the light switch.
Day 3 in Timișoara
The castle and the bastion, then out
Two pieces of fortification make a good short last morning, and they are four hundred metres apart.
The castle came first, begun in 1443 under Iancu de Hunedoara, and is the oldest thing standing in Timisoara by a wide margin. The bastion is Habsburg, from the 18th century rebuilding, and is the largest surviving fragment of the walls that surrounded the whole old town.
- 09:30
Huniade Castle
OtherBegun in 1443 and much rebuilt since, now holding the regional history collection. The building itself is the exhibit; allow an hour and do not expect modern museum design.
- 11:00
Maria Theresia Bastion
OtherThe best preserved stretch of the Habsburg fortifications, restored, with cafes and galleries in the casemates underneath and a good bookshop at one end.
With more time: With a later flight, the open air museum of Banat village architecture sits in the woods north of the centre and takes a couple of hours including the tram out.
Before you go
Getting in
Traian Vuia airport is 10 km out and is Romania's third busiest, with cheap direct flights from across Europe. That, rather than the train, is how most people should arrive.
Overland, there are direct trains from Budapest in about 5 hours and Vienna in about 8, which makes Timisoara a sensible first or last stop on a longer Central European trip. Trains from elsewhere in Romania are slow: Sibiu is around 8 hours, and Bucharest is an overnight.
Crossing into Serbia is harder than the map suggests. Direct Belgrade trains were discontinued and cross border services have been unreliable, so check current options rather than assuming.
Getting around
Walk. The three main squares are within ten minutes of each other and everything on this trip is inside a 2 km circle.
Trams, trolleybuses and buses cover the rest of the city cheaply. Tickets come in two kinds, one for the express buses and one for everything else, and are sold at kiosks by the stops rather than on board. Timetables are approximate.
When to go
April to June and September. Timisoara sits on a plain with no hills to break the heat and July and August are heavy; the flowering plane trees and rose beds that earned it the name City of Flowers are at their best in late spring.
Around 40,000 students give the city its evening life, so term time is livelier than the summer holidays, which is the opposite of most places you will have been.
Timisoara is the Romanian city that looks least like the rest of Romania and knows the most about how the country changed. Three squares, three rites, a Habsburg grid, and a week in December 1989 that started here and finished in Bucharest.
Fly in, walk everything, and give the memorial museum longer than you planned to.
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 Timisoara worth a trip on its own?
- Yes, if you fly in. It has direct budget flights from much of Europe, two days of things to see, and prices well below Cluj or Brasov. What it does not have is a natural overland connection to the rest of Romania, so pairing it with Transylvania means a long train or a flight via Bucharest.
- How long do I need?
- Two nights. The squares and the revolution sites fill a day and a half comfortably, and the third morning takes care of the castle and the bastion. A third night only makes sense if you are using the city as a base for the Banat countryside.
- Can I cross into Serbia or Hungary from here?
- Hungary yes, with direct trains to Budapest in about five hours. Serbia is more awkward: the direct Belgrade trains were discontinued and cross border services have come and gone, so check what is running before you plan around it.
- What is there for the evening?
- More than you would expect from a city this size, because of the students. Union Square and the streets off it carry most of the restaurants, the bastion vaults hold the late bars, and the opera, the national theatre and the philharmonic all run full seasons at prices that would embarrass Vienna.