Romania

Romania occupies 238,397 square kilometres at the confluence of Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe, a territory traversed by the spinal ridge of the Carpathian Mountains and caressed by the Black Sea; its 19 million inhabitants constitute the European Union’s sixth-most populous state.

From the moment one crosses into Romanian territory—whether by train from Hungary through the Pannonian Plain, by car from Bulgaria past the gentle southern Wallachian foothills or by ferry into Constanţa’s bustling port—it is evident that this land is defined by its contours. The Carpathian arc carves a broad crescent from the northwestern border near Ukraine to the southwest, casting long shadows over plateaus and valleys. Here, where Moldoveanu Peak rises to 2,544 metres, the continental climate yields sharp winters, summers of measured warmth and precipitation that blankets the highest western ranges with more than 750 millimetres of rain each year, while the lowlands around Bucharest record nearer 570 millimetres. The Danube, Europe’s second-longest river, courses along the southern frontier before spreading into the Danube Delta’s 5,800 square kilometres of marshland—Europe’s largest continuous wetland and a biosphere reserve of remarkable biodiversity.

Settlement of what is now Romania stretches back into the Lower Paleolithic, long before Roman legions disembarked on the Black Sea coast. For centuries, the Dacian Kingdom held sway across the Carpathian basin, until the campaigns of Emperor Trajan in the early second century CE initiated a process of Romanisation whose linguistic echo endures in the Romanian language. Millennia of shifting borders and allegiances followed. In 1859 the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia united under Alexandru Ioan Cuza, crystallising the modern Romanian state. Independence from Ottoman suzerainty came in 1877, ratified by the Treaty of Berlin, and two years later Carol I ascended as the first king of Romania. World War I broadened these domains: Transylvania, Banat, Bukovina and Bessarabia coalesced with the “Old Kingdom” to form Greater Romania, a state whose northern, southern and western perimeters grazed the borders of Hungary, Bulgaria and what would become the Soviet Union. Axis pressure in 1940 saw the loss of territories to Hungary, Bulgaria and the Soviet dispensation, yet a coup in August 1944 realigned the country with the Allies and, by the Paris Peace Treaties, restored Northern Transylvania. Under Soviet occupation, King Michael I’s abdication ushered in the socialist republic that joined the Warsaw Pact, only to dissolve amid the Revolution of December 1989, when Romania chose liberal democracy and a market economy.

Today’s Romania is classified by the World Bank as a high-income economy and by political scientists as a middle power. Its semi-presidential republic is governed by a multi-party system that balances executive and legislative authority, while membership in the European Union, NATO and the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation underscores its strategic weight. In 2024 the nation’s GDP at purchasing-power parity approached US $894 billion, amounting to US $47,203 per capita, memories of a decade marked by macroeconomic instability and erratic growth yielding to a trajectory of robust expansion since 2000. Romania’s ascent from a Frontier to a Secondary Emerging Market on the FTSE Russell index in September 2020 reflected its evolution; the Bucharest Stock Exchange now boasts a market capitalisation of US $74 billion and trades some US $7.2 billion annually through its eighty-six listed companies. Automotive and related manufacturing rank among its principal exports, while a reputation as a technology hub has been cemented by some of the world’s fastest average internet speeds.

Transport infrastructure mirrors this dynamism. Romania’s total road network extends over 86,080 kilometres, and the fourth-largest railway system in Europe offers more than 22,000 kilometres of track. After a post-1989 decline in rail travel, recent investments and partial privatisation have prompted a revival, carrying nearly 45 per cent of the nation’s freight and passenger traffic. Within the capital, the Bucharest Metro—an eighty-kilometre lattice of underground lines inaugurated in 1979—accommodates over 720,000 riders each workday. Air travel is served by sixteen international airports, chief among them Henri Coandă International at Otopeni, through which more than 12.8 million passengers passed in 2017.

Nature persists across almost half of Romania’s land area, segmented into six terrestrial ecoregions from the Balkan mixed forests of the southwest to the Pontic steppes that fringe the Black Sea. Some 10,000 square kilometres—about five per cent of the national territory—are protected as thirteen national parks and three biosphere reserves. The Danube Delta alone is home to 1,688 plant species and more than 300 bird varieties, while nearly 27 per cent of Romania’s forests remain undisturbed, among the largest such expanses in Europe. Fauna includes roughly 33,792 species—of which 707 are vertebrates—harbouring half of Europe’s brown bear population outside Russia and fully 20 per cent of its wolves. Conservation efforts have identified 23 plant species as natural monuments and documented 39 as endangered.

Romania’s regions unfold as narratives in themselves. Transylvania’s highland heart is intersected by the Transylvanian Alps, where medieval towns such as Sibiu and Sighișoara perch among oak-shaded citadels. Banat, in the west, blends Pannonian plains with Baroque cities and stretches of German-influenced villages, underpinned by the forested slopes of the eastern hills. Oltenia, to the southwest, cradles ancient cave monasteries and thermal spas in the Carpathian foothills before giving way to a semi-arid expanse reminiscent of a steppic desert. Southern Bukovina, in the northeast, is celebrated for its painted monastic complexes, frescoed exteriors standing like secret iconographies among rolling hills. Maramureș, the northernmost province, remains a stronghold of wooden church carpentry and peasant traditions, its undulating landscapes traversed by slow-moving streams. Crișana, along the Hungarian frontier, welcomes most overland sojourners, who sometimes overlook its Central European-style towns and the Apuseni-range retreats. Northern Dobruja, abutting the Black Sea, combines ruins of Greek and Roman settlements with resort districts such as Mamaia and the untouched wetlands of the Danube Delta. Moldavia’s cultural tapestry encompasses fortified monasteries, burg-towns and gentle plains punctuated by vineyards. Finally, Muntenia embraces Bucharest—where Nicolae Ceaușescu’s “People’s House” broods above medieval quarters—and the Wallachian heartland of Vlad Țepeș’s ancestral fortresses and the ski resorts of the Prahova Valley.

Urban life in Romania is multifaceted. Bucharest, the nation’s largest metropolis and financial nucleus, juxtaposes nineteenth-century Belle Époque boulevards with the colossal structures of Ceaușescu’s socialist modernism. Cluj-Napoca, home to one of Europe’s largest student populations, radiates youthful energy through its universities and burgeoning tech firms. Timișoara, often hailed for its multicultural heritage and Art Nouveau architecture, was the cradle of the 1989 Revolution. Iași, once the capital of a Moldavian principality, remains a centre of literature and learning, its public squares lined with baroque palaces. Constanţa, on the edge of the Black Sea, is both a commercial port and a resort destination. Brașov, nestled beneath the Carpathian peaks, draws mountaineers to Poiana Brașov and history enthusiasts to the nearby Râșnov Citadel and the so-called Dracula’s Castle at Bran. Smaller jewels—Sibiu, Sighișoara, Alba Iulia and Bistrița—offer preserved medieval cores and quiet avenues where cobblestones echo centuries of procession and pilgrimage.

Tourism has ascended as a vital economic engine, accounting for some five per cent of GDP and attracting 14 million foreign visitors in 2024. Summer on the Black Sea coast remains a draw, with Mamaia’s beaches and Constanţa’s promenade lively with cafés and spas. Winters entice skiers to Sinaia, Predeal and Poiana Brașov, while the painted churches of northern Moldavia and the wooden sanctuaries of Maramureș lure cultural travellers. Rural tourism flourishes in villages that maintain traditional folklore, from Bran’s proximity to Dracula’s poison-tongued legend to the fortified churches of Transylvania and the long-distance Via Transilvanica trail, which winds through ten counties as a testament to slow-travel ideals. Investments in hospitality—some €400 million in 2005—have modernised hotels, yet many guesthouses preserve vernacular architecture and home-cooked sarmale (cabbage rolls). Bran Castle alone draws hundreds of thousands annually, its turrets and narrow courtyards reflecting both medieval defense and modern marketing. The Danube Delta remains a sanctuary for wildlife observers, who glide through reed-choked channels in wooden skiffs to glimpse pelicans and marsh harriers.

Romania’s demographic mosaic is changing. The 2021 census recorded 19,053,815 residents. Ethnic Romanians constitute 89.33 per cent, Hungarians 6.05 per cent and Roma 3.44 per cent—though independent estimates place the Roma share nearer 8 per cent. Hungarian communities retain majorities in Harghita and Covasna counties, and small enclaves of Ukrainians, Germans, Turks, Lipovans, Aromanians, Tatars and Serbs dot the land. Post-EU accession migration and low birth rates have initiated a gradual population decline, even as urban centres swell with domestic relocation and foreign expatriates seeking opportunities in technology and automotive manufacturing.

Romania’s cultural heritage has been recognised through eleven UNESCO World Heritage Sites—six cultural and five natural—ranging from the painted monasteries of Bukovina to the Danube Delta’s intact deltaic system. This recognition underscores a central paradox: Romania is both a land where history is palpable in every carved wooden portal and patinated battlement and a society propelling itself into the twenty-first century with fibre-optic cables and semiconductor plants. One may traverse a rural road lined with sunflowers under a vault of blue, encounter a shepherd tending sheep at dawn and, hours later, board a high-speed train destined for Bucharest’s glass-fronted business district.

The Romanian story is one of convergences: the Latin tongue flourishing amid Slavic, Magyar and Ottoman influences; Baroque squares inhabited by university students and Orthodox pilgrims alike; forested mountains sheltering Europe’s last great carnivores and valleys strung with solar farms. It is a nation where history’s palimpsest remains visible—Roman roads beneath modern highways, medieval guildhalls beside sleek glass façades—and where economic metrics of GDP and market capitalisation must be measured alongside the quiet persistence of folk song and the cicada chorus at dusk.

In this convergence lies Romania’s enduring allure: a country at once ancient and emergent, its identity shaped by geography and epoch, its people stewards of a land that continues to surprise those who expect only the familiar. Here, every journey is a discovery of time as much as terrain, and every city square an invitation to listen to a civilization that has learned to balance resilience with renewal.