Tourist Attractions in Bistrita County
Today's leisure trip is to northern Romania, Bistrita Nasaud County, an area rife with tourist spots for all tastes.
Daniel Onea, 27.08.2015, 13:18
Today’s leisure trip is to northern Romania, Bistrita Nasaud County, an area rife with tourist spots for all tastes. You should start with its seat where you have plenty of monuments, old churches and museum. Then we recommend you go towards the mountains, where you find resorts, beautiful lakes and fascinating caves. The villages in the mountains are repositories of skill and tradition.
The area is like a country made up of several countries, as we found out from Bogdan Ivan, spokesperson for Bistrita Nasaud County Council:
“Both geographically and historically, Bistrita County can take tourists back in time through the Saxon burg of Bistrita, one of the historic seven seats of the Saxons in Transylvania, and through the Romanian village, where now, in the 3rd millennium, you can still see peasants living the way they did in early 20th century. Also, the town actually appears in the original novel Dracula, by Bram Stoker, where the protagonist, Jonathan Harker, starts on his way from Bistrita. This area preserves lots of traditions, and we tried to tie those in with the Dracula myth. This materialized in a festival, the Garlic Festival, which has been running for the last two years, in early September, and so far it has attracted at least ten thousand tourists.”
Any trip has to start off in the town of Bistrita, at the foot of Bargau Mountains, crossed by the river of the same name. The town was first documented in 1264. the old center is a living monument to its rich past. The oldest historical monument in the city is the old church, which is now an Orthodox church, built between 1270 and 1280. A very interesting place is the Sugalete, a complex of 13 buildings with arches, which in the 15th and 16th centuries were the city’s commercial area. Last but not least, the most popular tourist spot is the Evangelical Church downtown, a symbol of the city. The edifice was finalized in its present form in 1563. Here you can see five-century old furnishings, the 13 standards of the Bistrita guilds, and many more. Here is Bogdan Ivan again with details:
“In addition to history and to our close ties to the past, we have in the township of Bistrita the tallest Transylvanian Evangelical church tower, built of stone. It stands 75 meters tall, and is 450 years old. Tourists can take an elevator up the tower. As our mayor is fond of saying, this is the only Evangelical church tower with a modern elevator between Moscow and Vienna.”
And now let’s leave Bistrita and head to the mountains. We will find there secluded, archaic places, preserving old traditions, where people lead quiet lives, farming and raising cattle. One of the places you will be loath to leave is the resort of Colibita. The dam lake of the same name is at an altitude of 900 meters, has a surface of 270 ha, and is 13 km long. Andreea Spanu is a tourist agent with the local tourist information center, and she presents the tourist offer:
“This area is typical of depression geography. In the middle of the depression there lies the dam lake, the main attraction in the area. The depression is in the east of the county, where two mountain massifs meet. In fact, around 2% of Calimani Nature Reservation is on our village land. Most people come here for relaxation. You can trek, you can horse ride, you can take trips by carriage or sleigh. Natural resources, the quality of the air, the pristine water, the flora and the fauna, they are all special. You can also have more extreme forms of fun, like kayaking, rafting, paragliding, mountain climbing, even hunting. The area has a lot to offer.”
Colibita is a unique place in Eastern Europe, says Bogdan Ivan:
“The air in the area is comparable with that on Mont Blanc. It has healing properties due to its concentration of negative ions, ozone and iodine. At the same time, you can enjoy a spectacular view. We call Colibita Lake the ‘Sea in the Mountains’, and I think anyone who saw it would agree. In our county you can partake of the local, traditional cuisine. You can discover there recipes passed down the generations for centuries. In Bistrita and Colibita you have plenty of places that make these dishes. At the same time, we have loads of traditional crafts, people who make traditional costumes and footwear, as well as loads of traditional art objects. We also boast the wine made in Lechinta, which is sold under the brand name Liliac. It has won over ten gold medals at wine competitions around the world.”
A special spot on the tourist map of Bistrita is Beclean Horse Ranch. Here you can admire their Lipizaner horses, the Austro-Hungarian imperial horse, with origins around 1580. Beclean is proud of its Black Lipitzaner, which are pretty rare in the world. Close by, surrounded by mountains, on a side of the road between Vatra Dornei and Bistrita, in Tihuta Pass, is Fantanele Monastery, built in 1928.
Right now, Bistrita County Council has a project to build an equestrian center on Bargau Valley, on the route described in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Children as young as three or four can learn horse riding alongside their parents. Tourism development plans include building a wide area for skiing close to Colibita lake.
You won’t have any problem with finding accommodation. You have B&Bs and hotels of all levels, for all pockets, between 20 and 90 Euro per night, breakfast included. Consider yourself invited to a trip to this beautiful area. We wish you a great trip.
