Travel Guide Hațeg

Between Deva and Petroșani, this small town of just 9,000 inhabitants is a good gateway to the Retezat Mountains. Hațeg is surrounded by several interesting villages, such as Sântămăria Orlea, 3 km to the south. The paintings in its 13th-century church are said to be the oldest Orthodox paintings in the country (1311-1400). Strei, a tiny village to the north of Hațeg, boasts a beautiful 13th-century rough-stone church with a somewhat unusual architecture, part Romanesque and part Gothic. It retains some of its 14th-century wall paintings. In Densuş, southwest of Haţeg, the Romanesque Orthodox church charms with its rough, rustic appearance. It was built in the 12th and 13th centuries with stones from the ancient fortress of Sarmizegetusa. On the road to Caransebeş, just before Bucova, the spectacularly narrow passage of the "Transylvanian Iron Gate" was the scene of many battles throughout history.