The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Romania
8 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful sacred places in Romania are Merry Cemetery, Prejmer fortified church and Horezu monastery. The list covers 8 sacred places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Romania sits where several Christian worlds overlap, and each left a distinct kind of sacred place. In Moldavia, Orthodox princes of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries covered the outer walls of their monasteries with frescoes. In Transylvania, Saxon villages turned their churches into fortresses against Ottoman and Tatar raids. In Wallachia, princely foundations developed an ornate style of carved stone and porches, and in Maramureș a deep folk tradition of wood and painting survives in churches and graveyards.
The Merry Cemetery at Săpânța replaces solemn headstones with brightly painted wooden crosses, each carved with a scene from the life of the dead and a witty verse. Prejmer is the largest fortified church in south-eastern Europe, its church enclosed by a ring of walls lined with hundreds of storage rooms where villagers could shelter. Biertan, perched on a hill inside triple walls, was for nearly three centuries the seat of the Lutheran bishops of Transylvania.
Voroneț, founded by Stephen the Great, is known for the intense blue of its painted walls and a vast Last Judgment on its western facade, and Sucevița holds the largest number of painted images among the Bucovina monasteries. Horezu, founded by Prince Constantin Brâncoveanu, gave its name to the Brâncovenesc style, and the church at Curtea de Argeș, wrapped in the legend of Master Manole, is the burial place of Romania's kings.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Merry Cemetery | Cemetery | |
| 2 | Prejmer fortified church | Fortified church | ✓ |
| 3 | Horezu monastery | Monastery | ✓ |
| 4 | Curtea de Argeș Monastery | Cathedral | |
| 5 | Biertan fortified church | Fortified church | ✓ |
| 6 | Sucevița Monastery | Monastery | ✓ |
| 7 | Voroneț Monastery | Monastery | ✓ |
| 8 | Church of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, Șurdești | Church building | ✓ |
01 Merry Cemetery
Romania · 35.8 km from Baia Mare47.971° N 23.696° E
Chainwit. · CC BY-SA 4.0 Pătraș didn't flatter anyone. A drinker gets a verse about the bottle that killed him; people are shown at the trade or habit they were best known for, painted in flat, bright colors against a specific shade of deep blue the region now calls Săpânța blue — a color Pătraș said stood for hope and sky, set against green for life, yellow for fertility, red for passion, and black for death.
Did you know? The cemetery surrounds the village church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in Săpânța.
02 Prejmer fortified church
Biserica fortificată din Prejmer
Romania · 16.3 km from Sfântu Gheorghe45.722° N 25.773° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by ozsvathcsilla from Pixabay What makes Prejmer extraordinary is the ring that grew around the church. The village sat at the mouth of the Buzău Pass, the first place invading Ottoman and Tatar armies reached as they came over the Carpathians, and it was destroyed many times over. In the 15th and 16th centuries the villagers answered with a circular wall up to 12 metres high and as much as 5 metres thick, once surrounded by a moat.
Did you know? The ring of the fortress wall encloses a courtyard about 70 metres across, with five towers set into the defences.
03 Horezu monastery
Mănăstirea Horezu
Romania · 30.3 km from Râmnicu Vâlcea45.169° N 24.007° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
seriykotik1970 from Moscow Russia · Public domain The monastery is laid out on an east–west axis around a rectangular walled courtyard. Along the north side run the monks' cells, now the nuns' quarters, behind a long arcade; on the south stands the princely residence with its bell tower and council hall; the refectory with a chapel above closes the west side.
Did you know? Among the library's early treasures are an edition of Homer's Odyssey printed in Basel in 1541 and Euripides' tragedies printed there in 1551.
04 Curtea de Argeș Monastery
Mănăstirea Curtea de Argeș
Romania · 23.6 km from Râmnicu Vâlcea45.157° N 24.675° E
Pudelek · CC BY-SA 4.0 The church was founded by Prince Neagoe Basarab of Wallachia: building began in 1512 and the church was consecrated in 1517. It follows a Byzantine plan, but its decoration reflects the wider influences reaching Wallachia at the time, with stone facing on the outside and a brick interior covered in frescoes.
Did you know? Neagoe Basarab died before the decoration was done, and his successor Radu of Afumați completed it, as an inscription of 1526 records.
05 Biertan fortified church
Biserica fortificată din Biertan
Romania46.135° N 24.521° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Otto Schemmel · Public domain The church itself, a Late Gothic hall church with three naves of equal height, was built between 1486 and 1524 on the site of an earlier Romanesque one, and was the last of its kind in Transylvania. Biertan's status explains its ambition: it held market rights, competing with Mediaș, and from 1572 to 1867 it was the seat of the bishops of the Saxon Lutheran church.
Did you know? Above the choir sits a defensive storey with battlements; a second, wooden fighting level stood above it until it was demolished in 1803.
06 Sucevița Monastery
Mănăstirea Sucevița
Romania47.778° N 25.711° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Alexander Klink · CC BY 4.0 The church itself combines the Byzantine plan and Gothic stone details typical of Moldavian architecture, with a tall drum over a star-shaped base. Its painting, inside and out, is said to hold more images than any other church in the region.
Did you know? Two small open porches on the north and south sides, with arches on columns, echo the architecture of neighbouring Wallachia rather than Moldavia.
07 Voroneț Monastery
Mănăstirea Voroneț
Romania · 32.6 km from Suceava47.517° N 25.864° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Dstefanescu · Public domain The exterior paintings came six decades later. In 1547 Metropolitan Grigorie Roșca added an exonarthex at the west end and had the whole outside painted. He left the west façade entirely without windows, clearly to make room for a single composition: a vast Last Judgment that fills the wall from top to bottom, with the river of fire dividing the saved from the damned, and the dead rising from their graves.
Did you know? The interior paintings are older than the exterior ones, dating mainly from 1496, and include a votive portrait of Stephen the Great.
08 Church of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, Șurdești
Biserica de lemn din Șurdești
Romania · 15.6 km from Baia Mare47.597° N 23.764° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Pivari.com · CC BY-SA 4.0 The body of the church is a simple rectangle with a polygonal apse, but everything is done with care. A double roof eave runs all the way round, the windows are cut with ogee tops, and a carved twisted-rope band encircles the walls. The west porch is built on two levels with two rows of stacked arches, which gives the entrance an unusual lightness, and the joints of the log walls can be seen most clearly on the outside of the apse.
Did you know? The windows in the wall between the pronaos and the nave were only cut in 1932, more than two centuries after the church was built.
More about Church of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, Șurdești →
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful sacred places in Romania?
- On our list, Merry Cemetery ranks first, followed by Prejmer fortified church and Horezu monastery.
- Why are the monasteries of Bucovina painted on the outside?
- In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Moldavian princes and nobles had both the interior and exterior walls of their churches covered with frescoes, turning them into illustrated books of saints, prophets and biblical scenes for everyone who came to the church. Several of them, including Voroneț and Sucevița, are on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
- Why are churches in Transylvania fortified?
- From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, Saxon communities in Transylvania faced repeated Ottoman and Tatar raids, so they surrounded their village churches with walls, towers and storage rooms. In an attack the whole village could retreat inside with its food and wait out the siege.
- How many sacred places are on this list in Romania?
- The list covers 8 sacred places.