Cluj-Napoca Haunted Old Town Self Guided Ghost Tour
- 1h 30m
- Free cancellation up to 24h before
- Guided in English
- Instant confirmation
Highlights
The dead of Cluj have been moved at least four times. They began in the churchyard by the Franciscans, went under Piața Unirii, then into the ditch below the city wall, and finally up the hill to Hajongard. This self-guided ghost walk follows them. The Questo app gives you a case file on the old town, open since 1949, and a simple brief: check what the dead say against what the city wrote down. Cluj wrote down a lot. It kept the itemised bill for executing General Baba Novac in 1601, down to the two florins paid for carving the stake. It recorded the 1565 trial of a midwife sentenced to burn "at the usual place", and never noted where that was. You'll walk from Babos Palace past the house where Matthias Corvinus was born, across Piața Unirii, along the old wall on Strada Potaissa and through the Central Cemetery, solving a puzzle at each of 13 stops. Plan on two hours for roughly 2.6 km, ideally after dark. Hints are built in, and support answers around the clock.
Inclusions
What's included
- Full availability: Every day of the year.
- Flexibility: start, take a break and continue at your own pace.
- Access to the self-guided city exploration game in the Questo app
What's not
- Live game master or physical guide
- Private transportation
- Meals
Itinerary
The case opens at Babos Palace, one of four grand buildings that newly rich families raised at the bridge end of the old town within four years. A plaque on its wall fills the gap in your first note. One of the four owners, a butcher, sold his palace two years after it was finished.
You'll walk down Regele Ferdinand, past the line where a gate tower stood until the 1800s, and check its relief plaque against your photo. On Piața Muzeului, the Franciscan church is the oldest building in the city, sitting on its first cemetery and on the Roman forum of Napoca, and a sticker hides the lettering you need over its door. Round the corner, a plain stone house claims King Matthias Corvinus, born there in 1443, and a riddle about his coat of arms sends you looking up.
Behind the buildings of Piața Unirii stands the old prison tower where the midwife Kőmíves Prisca waited in 1565 before she was burned. You'll turn the blue plaque into a password with a word code. On the corner, the Pharmacy Museum keeps the city's first pharmacy of 1573, and you'll pick its real niche statue out of four photos.
Piața Unirii is the heart of the file. Over a hundred thousand people are buried around St Michael's Church, and you'll work out what's been removed from a close-up of the bronze Matthias Corvinus monument. In 1601 General Baba Novac was executed on this square, and the city still has the itemised bill.
Strada Potaissa runs along 250 metres of the medieval city wall, where people with no money for a gravestone scratched their dead's names into the stone, and a sticker on a street sign hides your next answer. Up the hill, the Central Cemetery opened after a council vote on 11 May 1585, because the old ground was full of plague dead. You'll find what's missing from a photo of its gate sign. Somewhere on this slope are fourteen cartloads of bones dug out from under Piața Unirii, and nobody knows where.
At the Tailors' Bastion, the only part of the citadel that survived whole, a bronze Baba Novac has stood since 1975. Four photos give his shield four different shapes, and you'll pick the real one. His body was displayed on the road here in 1601.
This fortress-like Gothic church has changed faith three times in the same stone. A jumbled message leads you to a Roman numeral on the wall of the old Jesuit college, the first university on what is now Romanian soil. The St George statue outside is a 1904 copy. The 1373 original, cast by two brothers from Cluj, is in Prague.
The file closes on Strada Universității, by the baroque Piarist church and the Virgin Mary plague statue of 1744. You'll name what's been removed from a photo of the statue. It was taken down in 1959, vandalised in a suburb for sixty years, and came home in 2023 as a copy.
Cancellation
Free cancellation up to 24 hours before the experience starts, for a full refund.
Know before you go
- Meeting point
- The game starts at Babos Palace on Piața Mihai Viteazu. After booking, we'll message you a code and activation link. Activate with your own email, then log in to the Questo app with that email. No message? Open the app, tap "Bought a quest somewhere else?" and enter your booking reference number.
- Pickup
- Everyone meets at the starting point; there is no pickup.
- Ticket type
- Mobile or paper ticket accepted
- Operated by
- Questo
- Service animals allowed
- Public transportation options are available nearby
- Infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller
- Suitable for all physical fitness levels
- A charged smartphone with internet is required to play the game in the Questo app
- Comfortable walking shoes are recommended
How it compares in Cluj-Napoca
- Its from-price is 96% below the median of the 96 experiences we list in Cluj-Napoca.
- It is shorter than most of them.
- The operator lists free cancellation on it.
About Cluj-Napoca
Cluj-Napoca is the student-filled heart of Transylvania, with Gothic churches, café terraces and botanical gardens, and salt mines and mountains nearby.
Cluj-Napoca is the main city of Transylvania, in north-west Romania, built along the Someșul Mic river at the foot of wooded hills. The main square, Piața Unirii, is dominated by the Gothic Church of St Michael and the statue of King Matthias Corvinus, who was born in the city in 1443. Baroque and Habsburg-era buildings around it house cafés, and the Orthodox cathedral stands on a nearby square.
Top-ranked sights in Cluj-Napoca: Turda Gorge (Cheile Turzii).
Special offers in Cluj-Napoca
Was/now prices come from the operator, never from us.
