Experience the best of Târgu Mureș

Târgu Mureș stands on the Mureș river in the middle of Transylvania, a city where Hungarian and Romanian are both heard on the street. The Palace of Culture, built in 1913 in the Secession style, has a tiled roof, stained-glass windows and a hall of mirrors. Roses Square is the pedestrian heart of the old town, framed by Baroque and Secession façades, and the old citadel, a walled enclosure with a church inside, goes back to the Middle Ages.

The Teleki Library holds a collection of old books and manuscripts founded in the early nineteenth century, and the mathematician János Bolyai, one of the founders of non-Euclidean geometry, lived and is buried in the city. Sovata, a spa resort around a salt lake, lies about fifty kilometres to the east. Reghin, a town with a violin-making tradition, is to the north, and Sighișoara is to the south-east.

Transylvanian and Hungarian cooking meet here, with goulash, cabbage rolls, chimney cakes and thick dumplings with cheese. Local wine comes from the Târnave vineyards to the south. The city is small and walkable, with a student population that keeps the cafés busy. Summer is mild and the parks are green.