5 Days in Cluj-Napoca

Start on Piața Unirii, the old market square and still the center of everything, at St. Michael's Church, a huge Gothic hall church built over the 14th and 15th centuries, one of the largest in Transylvania. Its neo-Gothic tower, built in 1837-60, is 80 meters tall with its cross, the highest church tower in Transylvania. The church was restored in 2018-22 and won a European heritage award in 2024; the inside is light and calm, with fragments of old frescoes.

On the corner of the square, at number 28, the Pharmacy Museum fills the Hintz House, the city's first pharmacy, with jars of old remedies, including "mummy powder". It reopened in 2024 after six years of repairs.

In front of the church rides Matthias Corvinus, the most celebrated king of Hungary, born a few streets away in 1443. The bronze group by János Fadrusz was unveiled in 1902, and its plaster model won a grand prize at the Paris World Fair of 1900.

The statue is a monument to Cluj's arguments. Matthias's father, John Hunyadi, came from a family of Romanian origin, so both nations claim him. In 1932 the historian Nicolae Iorga had a plaque added stressing his Romanian roots; it came down in 1940 and went back up in 1992, when the nationalist mayor Gheorghe Funar also ordered archaeological digs in front of the statue and had the city's benches and bins painted in the Romanian tricolor. The square has seen worse: on 21 December 1989, as the revolution spread, army units fired on protesters here and on Bulevardul Eroilor, killing more than twenty people, which is why one of the city's main boulevards is named after that date.

On the east side of the square, the Bánffy Palace of 1774-85 is one of the finest baroque palaces in Transylvania, built for Count György Bánffy, later governor of Transylvania. It's now the Cluj Art Museum, with Romanian painting from Nicolae Grigorescu and Ion Andreescu to the interwar avant-garde, and a good collection of Hungarian painters from Transylvania. Even if you're not in the mood for art, see the courtyard and the staircase.

Cluj has its own dish, and it's the place to eat it: varză à la Cluj (kolozsvári rakott káposzta in Hungarian), layers of sauerkraut, minced pork, rice and sour cream baked in the oven. It's heavy, sour, creamy and very good on a cold day.

Eat it at Vărzărie on Bulevardul Eroilor, a canteen-style place that has been serving it for more than 50 years, alongside sarmale, cabbage rolls with polenta and sour cream, or at Roata, a traditional restaurant in the old town.

After lunch, walk south to the Reformed Church on Wolf Street (Farkas utca, now Strada Kogălniceanu), a tall, plain late-Gothic church built from 1486 for the Franciscans on the orders of King Matthias, and Reformed since the 1600s. In front stands a 1904 copy of the famous statue of St. George and the dragon that two brothers from Cluj, Martin and George, cast for Prague Castle in 1373. A few steps east is the Tailors' Bastion, the best-preserved piece of the old town walls.

Then walk back west along Strada Universității, past the Piarist church of 1718-24, the first baroque church in Transylvania, and the Unitarian church on Bulevardul 21 Decembrie; Cluj is where the Unitarian faith began, under the preacher Ferenc Dávid in the 1560s. You come out on Piața Muzeului, the oldest square in the city, where the first medieval fortress stood, over the Roman town of Napoca. Around the Carolina Obelisk, moved here in 1898 to make room for the Matthias statue, stand the 13th-century Franciscan church and café terraces, and on the corner is the house where Matthias was born, which belongs to the art university and is usually seen from outside.

Walk north across the little Someș river and climb the stairs to Cetățuia, the hill where the Habsburgs built a citadel in the early 1700s. Not much is left of it, and the hill has been neglected for years, but the view is the classic one: the whole old town, St. Michael's tower in the middle, and the hills behind turning orange.

On the way down, Strada Horea, at the foot of the hill, has the Neolog Synagogue of 1887, now the memorial to the more than 16,000 Jews of Cluj and the region deported to Auschwitz from the Iris brickyard ghetto in 1944; it's been under restoration for years, so see it from outside. Then have dinner around Piața Muzeului and Strada Universității, where the student crowd keeps the restaurants and bars busy all week.

The Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania, founded in 1922, the first of its kind in Romania, fills the Reduta Palace on Strada Memorandumului: costumes, carpets, painted furniture, tools and pottery from the Romanian, Hungarian and Saxon villages of Transylvania. The building itself is part of the story. In 1894 the Romanian leaders who had sent the Habsburg emperor a memorandum asking for their nation's rights were tried here and jailed, while thousands of Romanians protested outside. The street is named after it.

Walk west to the Central Park, laid out in the 19th century along the Someș, with a lake you can row on, the Chios pavilion on its island and the old Casino of 1897, restored as a cultural center. Have lunch in the center on your way to the next stop. This is where Cluj comes to walk and sit, and in summer the park fills with festival-goers during Untold. The first football derby between the city's two rival clubs, CFR and U, was played in October 1920; CFR won 8-0.

Take a Bolt or walk 25 minutes south up the hill to the Alexandru Borza Botanical Garden, one of the finest in Southeast Europe: 14 hectares on a slope, with a Japanese garden, a Roman garden with stones from Napoca, big greenhouses and a water tower of 1923 with a viewing gallery. It's run by the university; the greenhouses are closed on the first two Mondays of each month.

The Hajongard cemetery, the city's central cemetery, has been in use since the 16th century and is a hillside of old trees and stones a few minutes from the garden. Hungarian scholars, Romanian politicians, Saxon merchants and the families of the old aristocracy lie side by side, in three languages. Each faith has its own sections, but walking through them is a quick lesson in the city's history.

Cluj takes its coffee seriously, with small roasters and cafés all over the center. Stop at one on the way back to the center for a flat white or a filter coffee; Yume and Meron, which has several branches and bakes too, are two local favorites, and there are a dozen more within a few streets.

At dusk, walk to Avram Iancu Square. After 1918, Romania built itself a new center in Cluj, and Avram Iancu Square is it. At one end the Orthodox Metropolitan Cathedral, built in 1923-33, with a dome modeled on Hagia Sophia and a painted interior, a statement in a city of Catholic and Protestant churches. At the other the National Theatre and Opera of 1906, by the Viennese theater architects Fellner and Helmer, who built opera houses all over the empire. In the middle stands Avram Iancu, the lawyer who led the Romanians of the Apuseni mountains in the revolution of 1848, his statue put up in 1993 by Funar.

Cluj has two state opera companies, Romanian and Hungarian, and two state theaters, the Romanian National Theatre and the Hungarian Theatre, which tells you a lot about the city. Check what's on at the Romanian National Opera in the Fellner and Helmer building on Avram Iancu Square, or at the Hungarian Opera on the riverbank, and buy a ticket; prices are a fraction of Vienna's. Have dinner afterwards around the square.

Salt was mined at Salina Turda from Roman times until 1932, and what's left are enormous chambers carved out by hand, the floors more than 100 meters underground. It first opened to visitors in 1992, and after a big makeover in 2010 it became something between a museum and a theme park: you walk down long tunnels past the old machinery, the winches and the echo chamber, and come out on a balcony over the Rudolf mine, with a Ferris wheel, a mini-golf course and a sports area at the bottom, and below that the Theresa mine, with an underground lake and rowing boats.

It sounds like a gimmick, and it's still remarkable. The air is cool, about 11-12°C all year, and supposedly good for your lungs.

A few hundred meters from the mine, the La Salina winery makes white wines from the slopes above Turda, and its restaurant, Sarea-n bucate, sits at the foot of the vineyards. Have lunch with a glass of their Sauvignon Blanc or Riesling; tastings in the cellar are by arrangement. If you're driving, the zero-alcohol rule applies; take a bottle home instead.

West of Turda, about 14 km by road, the Hășdate stream has cut Turda Gorge (Cheile Turzii) through limestone, a canyon about 2 km long with walls up to 200 meters high, dozens of caves in the cliffs and a path along the stream crossing it on footbridges. Walk in from the cabana at the east end and turn back when you've had enough, or walk it all the way through. It's a nature reserve with rare plants and birds of prey, and climbers on the walls in summer.

Head back to Cluj for a quiet evening, or a drink on Strada Piezișă, the student bar street. Ask for pălincă, the double-distilled fruit brandy of Transylvania, or a beer from one of the city's craft breweries.

Opened in 1929, the Romulus Vuia Ethnographic Park was the first open-air museum in Romania: about 90 buildings brought from villages across Transylvania, from farmsteads, mills and workshops to three wooden churches, including one of 1773 from Cizer. It's smaller and quieter than the open-air museums in Sibiu and Bucharest, set on a forested slope, and you'll often have it to yourself.

The forest behind the park is Hoia-Baciu, which TV shows and websites love to call the most haunted forest in the world: UFOs, ghosts, a strange round clearing where no trees grow and trees bent at odd angles. There's no evidence for any of it, and for the people of Cluj it's a place to walk the dog, ride a mountain bike or have a barbecue. Walk to the clearing and judge for yourself.

Come back to the center for lunch. Try the Hungarian side of Transylvanian cooking today: gulyás soup, chicken paprikash, or töltött káposzta, cabbage rolls the Hungarian way, and for dessert vargabéles, a baked pudding of thin pasta and sweet cottage cheese. Zama, near Piața Unirii, does Transylvanian dishes with care, including mămăligă with goat's cheese.

Walk off lunch at the National History Museum of Transylvania, on the corner of Piața Muzeului. For years most of its collection sat in storage while the building waited for repairs; in January 2026 it opened a new permanent exhibition, the history of Transylvania told through objects, from the Dacians to the 20th century. The Roman lapidarium, a courtyard of carved stones from Napoca and the other Roman towns of the province, shows the Roman layer of the city that you can't see in the streets.

Spend the evening out. Cluj's bars range from courtyards and cellars around Strada Universității to alternative venues on the edge of the center. If there's a CFR or U Cluj match, the derby above all, it's worth seeing; football rivalries here go back a hundred years.

Rimetea is a Hungarian village of iron miners and smiths, with whitewashed houses with green shutters along a few streets, a Unitarian church and a small ethnographic museum. Restored house by house from 1996 by the Transylvania Trust, a heritage foundation from Cluj, it won a Europa Nostra prize in 1999 and is one of the best-kept villages in Romania.

Above it rises Piatra Secuiului, a limestone ridge. In July, the sun rises over the lower ridge to the north, disappears behind Piatra Secuiului and rises again, so locals say Rimetea is where the sun rises twice. With a few hours to spare, the marked trail up Piatra Secuiului (1,128 m) takes 2-3 hours there and back, with the whole valley below you.

Have lunch at one of the guesthouses in Rimetea, many of which cook for visitors: a soup, a pork stew with polenta, homemade cheese and, if you're lucky, kürtőskalács, the chimney cake of Transylvania, baked on a roller over embers. Ask for homemade pálinka if you aren't driving.

After lunch, drive 4 km to Colțești and walk up to the ruins of its fortress on a rocky spur west of the village, built around 1296 after the Mongol invasion and destroyed in 1703. Two towers and much of the wall are left, and the view over the valley, Rimetea and Piatra Secuiului is the best in the area.

Drive back in the late afternoon and book a table for the last night; on Sundays some restaurants close early, so check. Cluj's restaurant scene has grown up fast, with modern kitchens cooking local produce, and the traditional places do the classics, ciorbă de burtă (sour tripe soup), mici and papanași. Then walk once more across Piața Unirii, with St. Michael's lit up and the king on his horse.