Transfagarasan Road: When It’s Open and What to See

When is the Transfagarasan road open?

Start here, because this is the paragraph people skip and then arrive at a barrier. The Transfagarasan road is normally closed from the end of October to the end of June because of snow. That leaves it open for roughly four months a year. The exact opening date moves from year to year depending on when the snow melts in the highest sections, and it is announced by the Romanian roads authority rather than fixed in a calendar.

Two things follow from that. First, spring is not the season here. April and May look green in the valleys and are still deep in snow at 2,000 metres. Second, the road can close in the middle of summer too, whenever a storm, thick fog or a landslip makes the pass unsafe.

What closes is always the highest section over the pass. The lower stretches on both sides stay open all year, so you can still drive up the northern side as far as the cable car and ride it to Balea Lake in winter. What you cannot do out of season is cross the ridge by car.

The best time to drive it

July to mid September is the window where an open road is close to a certainty. July and August are also the busiest: coaches, motorcycle groups and queues for the viewpoint laybys. If you want the same reliability with fewer people, aim for the first half of September, when the weather is usually still settled and the crowds have thinned out.

Why the Transfagarasan road exists

This was never a tourist project. It is a military road, built between 1970 and 1974 on the orders of Nicolae Ceausescu, and the reason was the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Ceausescu expected Romania might be next and wanted a route that would let the army move quickly across the mountains from one half of the country to the other, even if the main roads fell.

The price was steep. Around six million kilograms of dynamite went into the construction, and official records put the death toll at 40 soldiers. Unofficial estimates from the workers themselves talk about hundreds. The nickname that stuck is Ceausescu’s Folly.

What made it famous outside Romania came much later. Jeremy Clarkson called it the best road in the world on Top Gear in November 2009, and from that point on the Transfagarasan stopped being a way of getting somewhere and became the destination itself. In high summer the traffic shows it.

Getting to the Transfagarasan road

The road runs north to south across the Fagaras mountains, roughly in the middle of Romania, and the practical question is which end you want to arrive at.

• Sibiu (SBZ) is the closest airport to the northern end and the easiest choice if the road is the main reason for the trip. It is a small, quick airport in a town you will want an evening in anyway.
• Bucharest (OTP) is the biggest hub with the widest choice of flights and the cheapest car hire, and it sits south of the mountains, so you approach the road from the Curtea de Arges side.
• Cluj-Napoca (CLJ) works if you are combining the Transfagarasan with northern Transylvania and Maramures. It is further away, so give yourself a driving day either side.

Seasonal routes to all three change from year to year, so check current schedules rather than assuming a direct flight exists. Timing matters more than the airport: there is no point flying in for a long weekend in May.

Hiring a car

You need your own vehicle. There is no bus over the pass, and the whole appeal of the road is being able to stop where you like. A few things worth knowing before you book:

• Book an automatic well ahead if you do not drive manual. Most of the Romanian fleet is manual and automatics sell out in high season.
• The smallest car is often the best car here. The hairpins are tight and the laybys are small. Nothing about this road rewards a large vehicle.
• Check the vignette. Romanian motorways and national roads need a rovinieta, and hire cars usually come with one. Confirm it rather than assume it.
• Carry cash in lei (RON). Stalls, small guesthouses and parking attendants often will not take cards, and nobody is interested in euros or pounds. At the time of writing a pound is worth roughly six lei, but check the rate before you travel.

Driving the Transfagarasan road, stop by stop

You can start either from the south at Curtea de Arges or from the north at Sibiu. Both work, but from the south you drive towards the hairpins and see them stacked up in front of you, which is the more dramatic way round.

1. The Vidraru dam and lake

The southern approach follows a big reservoir squeezed between mountains. You can drive across the dam wall and look straight down the valley from it. Above the dam stands a statue of Prometheus, which is easy to miss if you are watching the road.

2. Poenari Castle

A ruin on a rock spur above the road, and the castle Vlad the Impaler actually lived in, unlike the far more famous Bran. Getting up there means a staircase of more than 1,400 steps and about half an hour of climbing. Check in advance whether it is open, because it closes from time to time when bears are around.

3. The southern hairpins

The most photographed stretch of the whole road. There are viewing laybys right at the bends, and from them you look down on the ribbon of tarmac folding back on itself below you. In season they fill up, and parking is harder to find than you would expect from the photographs.

4. Balea Lake

A glacial lake sitting directly under the pass, at the highest point of the route. There is a chalet, a cluster of food stalls and, in winter, an ice hotel built fresh each year. This is also the spot you can reach by cable car when the road itself is closed.

5. The Balea tunnel

The high point of the crossing and, at 884 metres, the longest road tunnel in Romania. It is unventilated, narrow and unlit along its full length, so take it slowly and with your headlights on.

6. The Balea waterfall

On the northern side below the pass, a short walk from the car park. The cable car up to the lake runs from beside it.

7. The descent to Sibiu

The northern side is gentler and runs down through forest and villages into the foothills. The monastery at Cartisoara is worth the stop, and the fortified Saxon churches scattered around the area are the reason to keep driving slowly once the mountains are behind you.

How long does the Transfagarasan take?

The most common mistake is treating the crossing as a transfer between two towns. Average speed on the road is around 40 km/h, and on top of that come the stops, the photographs and, in season, the queues.

• The crossing itself, meaning the main mountain section, takes roughly three hours without stopping.
• With normal stops, set aside a full day.
• With Poenari and a walk at the lake it becomes a long day, and one that works far better with a bed booked at each end.

Two more things stretch the day out. Mornings are usually clearer than afternoons up at the pass, so an early start buys you the views. And the light on the southern hairpins is best when the sun is still high, which is another argument for not leaving the climb until late afternoon.

What the driving is actually like

• The road is narrow and full of blind bends. Do not overtake where you cannot see.
• There are a lot of motorcyclists and they move quickly. Bear that in mind when pulling out of a layby.
• The weather changes in minutes. Sunshine at the bottom, fog and eight degrees at the pass.
• Fill up in the foothills. There is no petrol station on the mountain section.
• Phone signal drops out in places. Download your maps for offline use.
• Leave campervans and large motorhomes behind. The hairpins are at the limit for them and in some spots there is nowhere to turn around.

None of this makes the road dangerous in itself. It is a well surfaced mountain road driven by ordinary hire cars every summer day. What catches people out is treating it like a motorway with a view: braking late into a blind bend, overtaking a slow coach on a straight that turns out not to be one, or coming down the northern side riding the brakes until they fade. Use a low gear on the descent and the road looks after itself.

What to sort out before you set off

The Transfagarasan is not an ordinary road, and a good half of the trouble people run into up there can be dealt with in the half hour before departure:

• A full tank. There is no petrol station on the mountain section, the nearest ones are down in the foothills at either end. Fill up before the climb, not when the warning light comes on.
• A car in good order. Brakes above all. The engine works hard on the way up, the brakes take the punishment on the long, steep descent.
• Food and water for the day. There are stalls at Balea Lake and a couple of the viewpoints, but in peak season there is a queue, and out of season they may not be open at all.
• A charged phone and a power bank. Signal fails on parts of the route, so download your maps offline before you leave.
• Warm clothes. It can be thirty degrees at the bottom and ten with a wind at the pass.
• Cash in lei for the stalls and parking.

Where to eat and what to do besides driving

There are few restaurants on the route and they cluster in two places: at Balea Lake, where the chalet has a dining room and there are stalls outside, and down in the foothills at both ends, where you find ordinary Romanian places at ordinary prices. In between there is essentially nothing, so plan lunch rather than hoping for it.

If you do not want to spend the whole day behind the wheel, you have options:

• Walks from Balea Lake. Marked paths lead from the lake up onto the Fagaras ridge, and it is the easiest way to get out of the car and into real mountains. Wear proper boots and accept that the weather up there can turn within the hour.
• The climb up Moldoveanu, Romania’s highest peak, for anyone with a few days and multi-day mountain experience behind them.
• The cable car to the lake from the northern side, which runs even when the road over the pass does not.
• Swimming and rafting on Lake Vidraru and in the Arges valley on the southern side.
• The climb to Poenari as an antidote to a day of sitting down.

Transfagarasan or Transalpina?

Romania has two famous mountain roads and the question of which one to drive comes up constantly:

• The Transfagarasan is the better known and the more dramatic, and it has more to stop for: the lake, the tunnel, the castle, the waterfall. It also has considerably more people on it.
• The Transalpina is Romania’s highest paved road, so it goes higher still, but the landscape is more open and less theatrical. It is quiet.

If you only have time for one, drive the Transfagarasan. If you have two days, do both. They are not far apart and they are not really competing: one is a canyon of rock and hairpins, the other is a long ridge with sheep on it.

Where to stay

• Sibiu on the northern side, the best base of the two, with a beautiful old centre to come back to.
• Curtea de Arges on the southern side, close to Poenari.
• The chalet at Balea Lake right at the top, if you want to see the lake in the morning before anyone else arrives. Book a long way ahead.
• Guesthouses in the Fagaras foothills, which double as a base for walking.

You can compare places near the Transfagarasan on one map with Stay22.

What to add to the trip

• The Fagaras mountains with Moldoveanu, Romania’s highest peak at 2,544 metres.
• Sibiu and the fortified Saxon churches around it.
• Brasov, Bran and Rasnov to the east.
• The Transalpina as a second mountain road.
• Sighisoara, the fortified UNESCO listed town.