Nature

In Transylvania, you'll be delighted by the natural beauty around you. Don’t forget your camera; you’ll have plenty of reasons to use it.

The landscape has been formed by generations of villagers. Extensive woodlands cover the hillsides, dominated by oak, beech, hornbeam, and lime trees. The valley bottoms are cultivated meadows; the meandering streams are lined by willows and alder. This is an open-access landscape, unfenced save for village paddocks, and largely free of buildings.

In Transylvania the wildlife is still largely unaffected by chemical pesticides. As a result, one finds a rare mixture of species now largely vanished from Western Europe. Red-backed shrikes perch on the power lines, storks on the chimney-stacks, and swallows nest in the village eaves and gables. In the forests surrounding the villages are some of the last remaining wolves and brown bears in Europe. The air is filled with of butterflies, particularly marbled whites, purple emperors, and swallowtails, floating in clouds around the grassland flowers.

The entire region is rich in biodiversity. It is estimated that over one hundred species of birds, seventy species of butterflies, fifty types of mammals, and many hundreds of species of plants can be found here. Transylvania has recently been included in the European Natura 2000 Network. This Network is designed to ensure the survival of Europe’s most valuable and most endangered habitats.