Vanished Worlds in Hateg Country
Țara Hațegului is one of the areas with the largest number of touristic, natural, and cultural objectives in Romania
Daniel Onea, 20.09.2023, 16:01
Țara Hațegului is one of the areas with the largest number of touristic, natural, and cultural objectives in Romania. Here you can find aurochs, medieval churches, old houses and castles, a lot of historical monuments of national interest, and even fossils of pygmy dinosaurs, unique in the world. The attractiveness of the area is also given by the more than 40 hiking or cycling routes, the ones for cycle tourism being approved by the Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Tourism, a national first. A trip to Țara Hațegului Retezat is, first of all, a journey through time, says Anca Rusu, the manager of this ecotourism destination.
“You can discover vanished worlds here, you can stand face to face with life-size dinosaurs that lived on Hațeg island 70 million years ago, or you can explore volcanoes and traces of an extinct sea. Coming to more recent times, you can admire mountain landscapes, lakes, carnivorous plants, all left over from the Ice Age, 10,000 years ago. Then, you will enjoy the traces left by the Romans in antiquity at Sarmisegetuza Ulpia Traiana, or the first places of Christianity, as the Densuș Church is considered. We are slowly reaching our days, passing through the medieval period, which left us important stone fortresses and churches in Țara Hațegului. And the local people continue to beautifully tell the story of these lands blessed by God.
In Țara Hațegului, there are trails for all lovers of active tourism.
It is very important to know more data about each individual tourist or each group of tourists, because we recommend the trails in the Retezat National Park to those who are active and in love with nature, of course. Retezat National Park is known to be an extremely technical mountain. Of course, there are various categories of difficulty, but in general Retezat is not recommended for beginners. For beginners, we have prepared trails from the other two natural parks located in Țara Hațegului: Grădiștea Muncelului-Cioclovina Nature Park, or UNESCO International Geopark Țara Hațegului. They are a bit more affordable and recommended for everyone, especially families with children. You can find details about all these routes on our website, turism-retezat.ro. There you will find them by category, according to each protected natural area.
Hațeg Country has never excelled in terms of crafts, as it happens in the north of Romania, in Bucovina or in Maramureș. However, there are projects and people who continue to carry on the few crafts that existed and still exist in Țara Hațegului, according to Anca Rusu.
“If I had to give an example of success, I would think of Cooperativa Hațegănă, a cooperative that still stubbornly produces by hand traditional folk shirts and costumes from Țara Hațegului and its surroundings, which you can easily find by accessing their page on Facebook, or coming to the city of Hațeg, in the center, somewhere behind the town hall. You find the ladies there, and you can learn their impressive story that has been being written for, well, over half a century.
And here we meet a special category of tourists compared to Retezat or the other mountain areas. Here, mostly, families with children arrive, who are looking for experiences regarding the discovery of fossils or everything that life meant on this former tropical island. They can discover activities at all the houses in the Geopark. But these are not the only point of attraction, says Anca Rusu, the manager of the țara Hațegului-Retezat ecotourism destination.
At Peșteana there is another important point, the Hațegan Village Museum, from where you can go on an easy hike and admire a swamp that is a bit special. Carnivorous plants, Drosera rotundifolia, live in the swamp, which you can admire with the children. If you want to go back in time, 70 million years ago, live like a paleontologist, and have with your children all kinds of wonderful experiences set up by people who interpret the special natural heritage that Țara Hațegului has, you can go at Casa Vulcanilor in Densuș. I recommend you call or find out more details on their website, casa-vulcanilor.ro, because it’s a shame to get there without a guide. There are activities that you have to discover with someone who explains them to you. They are among the most popular and spectacular activities with children that Țara Hațegului offers.
Since 2015, the Țara Hațegului Dinosaur Geopark Natural Park has come under international attention. It is declared an International Geopark by UNESCO. Thus, a lot of conferences, workshops, meetings at the highest geological and paleontological level take place here, together with specialists from across borders, who bring their families or recommend the area to the countries where they come from. Thus, tourists come from all over the world. And, starting this summer, the branding strategy has changed, as we learned from Anca Rusu, the manager of the destination.
Through all our activities, especially those of the local community, and following the public-private partnership that we, the Retezat Tourism Association in Țara Hațegului, coordinate, we propose that in ten years Hațeg will be known at the European level as a capital of dinosaurs. We still have a lot of work to do, we set out to do a lot, but it is not impossible, and we believe that we have extremely valuable things to show the world. And, if we talk about the new slogan of Țara Hațegului, it is summed up very nicely: Living Histories.
The easiest way to get to Țara Hațegului is from Sibiu International Airport. From here, you can rent a car and arrive in an hour and a half. There are also local buses. The duration of the journey will be approximately two hours, and a ticket will cost approximately 10 euros. From Bucharest, you can arrive by train or bus, but you will spend more than eight hours on the road.
