The Romanian Banat, in the folds of Europe

While everyone converges on Prague or Kraków, the Banat remains an overlooked fold of the European map. Set in the far west of Romania, on the edge of the great Pannonian plain, it's a borderland that history has crossed without ever truly conquering it whole. There are no queues here, no overrun squares: just wide countryside, dignified provincial towns and a silence that, at these touristic latitudes, feels almost like a luxury.

A plural soul

What makes it special is its plural soul. For centuries Romanian, Serbian, German and Hungarian communities have lived side by side, and this blend is still legible today in churches of different faiths facing onto the same street, in the food, in the town names written in several languages. The region was shaped in the Habsburg era, when, after the Ottoman retreat, the Austrians summoned German-speaking settlers, the Banat Swabians, to people villages that still bear their orderly imprint. Timișoara, the regional capital, is the easiest way in: an elegant city of Central European avenues and palazzos, an excellent base from which to explore the rest at leisure.

The Habsburg spa towns

The least-known heart of the Banat, though, is its Habsburg-era spa towns, once glamorous, today possessed of a suspended charm and prices from another decade. Băile Herculane, nestled in the valley of the Cerna river, is the most poignant example: frequented since Roman times and then revived in the nineteenth century as a fashionable spa resort for European nobility, it preserves Neo-Baroque and Belle Époque buildings, some abandoned, suspended between ruin and beauty. Its sulphurous springs keep flowing, indifferent to time.

Getting there

To visit it well you need slowness: few stops, the back roads, a willingness to sit down in a village bar and let people tell you their stories. It's an easy trip by train or car from Timișoara, itself linked to Europe by flights and rail lines; from there you head south, among the hills and mountains of the Banat highlands. Spring and early autumn offer the best light and a mild climate, far from the summer heat.

Who it's for

It's the ideal destination for anyone who loves arriving somewhere and feeling, for once, like the only tourist. Go with respect, without haste and without geotags: the Banat doesn't ask to be consumed, but to be listened to.

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