You Might Not Care, But These Are 7 Places in Romania That I Love - And I Think You Might Love Them Too
Romanian sculptor Marius Ritiu shares the 7 best places to visit in Romania: Brâncuși's Endless Column, Turda Salt Mine, Voroneț Monastery, Maramureș and more.
I left Romania in 2010. My friend Cristian and I drove from Cluj to Antwerp with a plan to stay four days. I never really went back - but Romania never really left me either. It's in the copper I hammer, in the stories I tell, in the way I think about borders and belonging.
People here in Belgium often ask me what they should see if they ever visit Romania. So here it is, once and for all: seven places that shaped me, or that I simply love. No order, no strategy. Just places. 1. Satu Mare — where it all started
I was born here in 1984, in the far northwest corner of the country, close to the Hungarian and Ukrainian borders. It's not a place tourists usually go, and maybe that's exactly why you should. It's an honest town - Habsburg architecture, a beautiful Art Nouveau theatre, and that particular light of the Someș river plain. Growing up on a triple border teaches you early that lines on a map are just lines. My whole work is, in a way, an argument with those lines. Satu Mare on VisitRomania
2. The Brâncuși Ensemble, Târgu Jiu — a pilgrimage every sculptor must make
The Endless Column, Târgu Jiu ·
The Endless Column, the Gate of the Kiss, the Table of Silence. Brâncuși built a war memorial that refuses to be a monument — it's a line of thought stretched across a whole town, ending in a column that climbs into the sky and simply doesn't stop. I studied classical sculpture in Cluj, and like every Romanian sculpture student, I carry Brâncuși like a beautiful weight. Stand under the Column at sunset. That's not advice, it's an instruction.
3. Turda Salt Mine — the most sculptural space I know
Salina Turda, 100 meters below the surface ·
An underground cathedral carved by hand, over centuries, by people who were not trying to make art — which is maybe why it became art. The machines dug down and left behind a negative space so vast it has its own weather. There's a Ferris wheel at the bottom of it, which sounds absurd until you're on it, one hundred meters below the surface, and it makes perfect sense. If you want to understand why I'm obsessed with what material remembers, go to Turda.
4. The Mocănița, Vișeu de Sus — a steam train into another century
The Mocănița on the Vaser valley, Maramureș ·
Maramureș is an hour and a half from where I grew up, and it's the Romania people don't believe still exists. The Mocănița is a narrow-gauge steam train that was built to carry timber down the Vaser valley, and it still runs — slowly, loudly, gloriously — through forests you can't reach by road. It's the opposite of everything my life in Antwerp is, and I love it for that.
5. Voroneț Monastery — the blue I've never managed to mix
The painted walls of Voroneț, Bucovina ·
In Bucovina, in the north-east, there are monasteries painted on the outside — entire Last Judgments facing the weather for five hundred years. Voroneț is the famous one, and its blue is so particular that it has its own name: Voroneț blue. Nobody knows the exact recipe anymore. As someone who spends his life coaxing color out of copper with fire, I have enormous respect for a pigment that keeps its secret for five centuries.
Everyone goes to Bran because of Dracula. Fine. But Corvin Castle is the one that looks like it was drawn by a child who was asked to imagine a castle — towers, drawbridge, everything. And it stands right next to the rusting steelworks of Hunedoara, medieval fantasy against communist industry. That collision of centuries in a single view is, to me, the most Romanian image there is.
A perfectly preserved medieval citadel that never became a museum — people live there, hang their laundry there, argue and fall in love inside a UNESCO monument. I passed through it countless times as a student travelling between Cluj and the rest of the world. Climb the Clock Tower, then get lost. The town is small enough that being lost lasts exactly as long as it should.
If any of this made you curious, VisitRomania.ro, you can also build your own Romania itinerary. Go. And if you end up under the Endless Column at sunset, think of me.
A final word. I wrote this because I accepted to help promote Romanian tourism through the VisitRomania.ro project To my Romanian artist friends living abroad: I encourage you to do the same... #visitromania
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