A tourist in Mureș County

The tourist offer of Mureș County includes special landscapes, with centuries-old trees, adventure parks, and especially old mansions and castles.

Daniel Onea, 13.03.2025, 14:00

Today we discover the most important tourist attractions in Mureș County. The offer includes special landscapes, with centuries-old trees, adventure parks, and especially old mansions and castles, some of which host events. Emphasizing the cultural offer, we also open the doors of the Mureș County Museum.

Dana Matic, project manager at Visit Mureș, will make us a holiday proposal that shows the uniqueness of this destination in Romania: “Mureș County hosts a great number of castles and mansions in comparison with other counties, and the phenomenon has gained momentum. We have brochures and materials on our website about castles that can be visited or about the condition they are in, what they shelter. Some are museums, others are hotels or event centers. Mureș has a few things that make it unique. If tourists come from Bucharest or the south of the country, they must stop first at Sighișoara. Near Sighișoara, there is a fantastic castle, Bethlen in Criș, located less than 20 km away from Sighișoara. Then, tourists can head north towards Târgu Mureș, the county seat, but can also make a small detour to Sovata resort. There we also have a castle that is now a museum, famous for the fact that Countess Claudia Rhedey, great-great-grandmother of King Charles III, was born there. Sovata is a famous destination boasting the largest heliothermal lake in the world, located in a very beautiful setting. The spa resort has been renovated and is one of the most beautiful in Romania. Then, there is the city of Târgu Mureș, where one can find the largest zoo in Romania and Art Nouveau objects.”

Nature lovers can hike on more or less steep trails, and those who prefer cultural events will find a rich offer in Mureș County. And the discovery of the region can begin on the Via Transilvanica. Also called the “road that unites”, the Via Transilvanica is a long-distance tourist route of 1,400 kilometers, which crosses Romania diagonally and is intended for hiking on foot, by bike or on horseback.

Dana Matic is back at the microphone with details: “We are also proud that three regions of the Via Transilvanica are in Mureș County. Mureș County is also part of the Transylvanian Hills, which have become an eco-tourism destination. The infrastructure for hiking, horseback riding, and cycling is very well developed. We also have pop music festivals that are very appreciated by young people, who come from many counties and also from other countries. The Vibe Festival probably brings together the most participants in the county. Apart from that, we have cultural festivals, we have the Rhubarb Festival in Saschiz, the Plum jam Festival or the Hot Air Balloon Festival, which now is also held in other places in Romania, but the first such festival was held in Mureș County, at Câmpul Cetății, near Sovata. In Mureș County, there are several places where you can go hunting truffles with trained dogs, and this is a plus as people return to gastronomy and slow tourism, they go out into nature. And this information can be found on our website, and I think it is a quite interesting activity.”

We continue our journey with Liliana Lirca, a PR officer at the Mureș County Museum. We are invited to visit the art section, which is in the Palace of Culture in Târgu Mureș, a newly renovated and very modern palace: “The palace is more than a façade. It is a story of over 111 years, and I invite you to enter it and discover its secrets. The Adrian Chira exhibition, “Traces and Signs”, is currently on display. It can be visited until April 4. It is on the second floor of the Palace of Culture, and those who visit will see many prisms throughout the city where a big heart is shown. It is part of the work of the artist Adrian Chira that you can see in the exhibition. The work is called Totem for the Heart. On the third floor of the Palace of Culture, there is the Gallery of Modern Romanian Art in the right wing, and, in the left wing, we see the Gallery of Hungarian Art. The most important interwar artists’ works are on display.”

Also, don’t miss the Ethnography and Folk Art Section of the Mureș County Museum. There, you can still see the temporary exhibition “Mureș people in the Trenches of the Great War”, which will close this year. On the other hand, the natural sciences museum is housed in a monument building, as we learn from Liliana Lirca: “The museum looks very good, especially now, after renovation. The main exhibition of the natural sciences section, where we have several sectors, has reopened. From paleontology, we see a mold cave from the Niraj Valley, we see an impressive collection of insects and many other extraordinary things, especially for children. It is the children’s favorite destination there. Parents can also enjoy everything that this section has to offer, and, in addition, we also have an impressive cactus greenhouse and a sensory garden. So, both children and parents can have a great time here. We continue with the Târgu Mureș Citadel. There you will find the History and Archaeology section of the museum. At present, we can see an extremely interesting exhibition there, “The Reframed Daily Life”. It includes the photographic archive of Gáspár Török. Very few people know that photography in Romania was founded in Târgu Mureș. After 1990, the factory for making x-rays was used a lot for negatives and photo films. You will see there an impressive archive starting from the communist period. Information is on our website www.muzeulmures.ro.” said Liliana Lirca

Mureș County is a multicultural space, a destination where gastronomy is famous, says Dana Matic, project manager at Visit Mureș: “We have Romanian, Hungarian, Saxon, Armenian and Jewish cuisine. Obviously, we can’t find these cuisines in restaurants yet, but I think that this is precisely our role, to convince entrepreneurs, restaurants, to put some specialties from those cultures on the menu, so that we should not lose this heritage. But we have some festivals or open doors days that are organized at the Synagogue in Târgu Mureș where associations come and cook special dishes.”

So, this is a holiday destination where accommodation is not just a place to rest. There are mansions and castles that offer a journey back in time. Then, the hospitality of the hosts and the special experiences will make you come back.