In the XIth century, Ladislau I built a fortified monastery. Between the XIth and XIIIth centuries, the fortress was a castrum. In the XIVth century , a new medieval fortress was built.

During the communist times , the fortress belonged to the monastery. After 1989 the started working on rebuilding the fortress. It’s been more than 20 years since the Revolution and, what do you know, when we wanted to visit the Fortress it was closed…for rebuilding and refurbishing.

You can pretty much see from outside, couple of bastions and two gates (but you aren’t allowed in). The fortress’s park looks good with a lot of info available for all tourists. Not that I’ve seen any (only locals and…us).

How to get to Oradea

By plane : Oradea has its own airport, but Budapest, Timisoara and Cluj are within easy reach.

By train: Oradea is connected to western Europe via Budapest, to the Balkans via Bucharest and to the rest of Romania.

By car: it is well connected to Hungary and the rest of Romania.

Our rating

The rebuilding should be finished by 2015. So we’ll try to visit it again…in 2016, just to be sure.