Grand Tour of Romania 2026-27 New

A truly comprehensive tour of Romania, taking in all the country's major attractions. Although we change hotel frequently and travel on ordinary main roads, the journey is not tiring, as the distances covered each day are short.

Did you know? Sighisoara, in the heart of Transylvania, is regarded as the ancestral home of the famous Count Dracula. The Monasteries of Bukovina, protected by UNESCO and scattered among woods and valleys, are true treasures of art, rich in splendid frescoes. The imposing Parliament building in Bucharest, known as the "House of the People" and left unfinished by the dictator Ceausescu, stands as a symbol of the regime and of its moral decay.

A brief history.

The territory of Romania was already inhabited in the Palaeolithic. Present-day Romania was first settled by the Dacians, proud warriors who were subdued by the Romans at the beginning of the 2nd century, in the time of Trajan, after a series of brutal campaigns. The Roman occupation was relatively short (165 years), yet it left a permanent legacy in the Latin language, which survived every subsequent invasion by nomadic peoples. A Romanian national identity gradually took shape with the formation, in the 13th and 14th centuries, of the feudal states of Moldavia and Wallachia. Centuries of struggle against the Turks followed, while Transylvania was occupied in turn by the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires. Finally, Moldavia and Wallachia united in 1859, gained independence in 1877 and completed the union with Transylvania in 1918. The communist regime installed at the end of the Second World War lasted 45 years and was overthrown by the Revolution of December 1989.

The eight churches of northern Moldavia, in Romania, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1993 (with an extension of the site in 2010). With their outer walls entirely covered in frescoes and splendid paintings inside, they are an outstanding testimony to Byzantine art in Eastern Europe. Skilfully blending traditional elements with personal touches, the anonymous authors of these painted cycles created a wholly original style, reaching a remarkable artistic level in their depiction of religious scenes, unique in the complexity of an iconographic programme inspired by the Orthodox faith. The origins of Moldavia as an independent state go back to King Bogdan who, having crossed the Carpathians in 1360, defeated the Tartar and Slav hordes and founded the Danubian principality. The region reached its greatest splendour under Stephen III, known as the Great (15th century), and his successors, among whom Petru Rares stands out. That glorious period saw the rise of an important cultural and religious movement, whose principal monuments are eight churches in the Suceava region.

The Moldavian churches have two distinctive features. The first is the Byzantine-style painted decoration of the exterior, which spread to Romania by way of Serbia. In no other Orthodox country are there buildings whose outer walls are completely covered in frescoes like those of the Moldavian churches, where we also find large-scale compositions such as the Last Judgement on the west facade of Voronet Monastery, dedicated to Saint George, a work that has earned it the name of the "Sistine Chapel of the East", or the Tree of Jesse on the south side of Suceava Cathedral. They represent the highest expression of the Byzantine tradition's tendency to favour painting over architecture. The second original feature lies in the structure of the domes, whose origins have been sought in vain in Armenian, Serbian, Byzantine, Hispano-Moorish and Assyrian buildings. In the end, the hypothesis most widely accepted by scholars is that it is an original contribution of Moldavia itself. This type of dome rests on two superimposed drums: a lower one, usually square, and an upper one, star-shaped, both purely ornamental.