Since the weather outside is quite grumpy and the winter can already be noticed slowly settling in, I thought it was a good idea to revive another experience I had a couple of months ago when I visited a place that I had on my bucket list for so long, known as Sarmizegetusa Regia.

This is, actually, a fairly popular place based on the number of tourists that are visiting it yearly from more parts of the world, but if you ask me if I felt it that way during my visit, I'd definitely say no because I still didn't feel like there were enough people around to explore what this place has to offer.

Actually, this was one of the main reasons that kept me away from visiting it since I always preferred exploring a less known part of the world rather than a very popular one, but considering that it's been at least 10 years since I planned to visit it one day, I was excited to finally cross it off my to-visit list.

After we left the car in the parking lot that is fairly large, a 15 minutes long hike was awaiting. This actually reminded me of the path I had to follow while visiting Peles Castle and Pelisor Castle.

But other than the familiar paved road, Sarmizegetusa Regia was going to have nothing in common with the two mentioned earlier.

After less than 15 minutes, as we had a quite fast pace of hiking constantly looking all around not to see a bear pop up on our path, we reached the ticket office which was surprising to see a bit far from where the actual exploring area starts, being very easy for some of the people to sneak without paying for a ticket. Obviously, I hope that's not going to be the case, especially since I consider the price of the tickets to be more than affordable for anyone.

Entrance Tickets

• Adults: 30.00 RON / ~ 6 EUR
• Students / Pupils: 10.00 RON / ~ 2 EUR
• Pensioners: 10.00 RON / ~ 2 EUR

Additional Fees & Services:

• Audio guide rental (available in EN, RO, FR, DE, HU): 30.00 RON / ~ 6 EUR per device (for 90 minutes)
• Specialized guided tour (groups up to 30 people):
-150.00 RON / ~ 30 EUR – English
-100.00 RON / ~ 20 EUR – Romanian

Right now, the location is open for visiting only on Sundays between 9 AM and 6 PM due to some renovations going on.

It was the same situation also in July when we visited it, so perhaps they will finish soon and return to the normal schedule.

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As soon as we got our tickets, we started walking around being welcomed by the first informative panels which you could easily miss if not paying enough attention just because there's very few remains of what it used to be here many years ago.

Actually, if you pay enough attention, you'll see that right at the bottom of each informative panel there is also a number written, which makes a lot more sense if you are listening to the audio-guided tour, but even so, it makes the journey a bit easier to keep up with all things you can explore around, not to miss something.

The first proper point of interest, though, was right after climbing the little hill from the previous image, where we ended up seeing what used to be a road almost completely paved with limestone slabs that was making the connection between the fortress and the sacred site.

The road used to be 4 meters wide, and at one point it was going to split in two, where one part of the road was leading to the Great Andesite Temple, and the other one to The Great Circular Temple. Right now, the path no longer has the limestone borders placed along the sides, which supported a shingle roof, but all these were meant to create some sort of a tunnel that was mostly used during the important religious events.

Anyway, as we were far from discovering the real importance of this place, the route took us closer to nature while making our way all the way down.

I really loved these small paths that were in between the points of interest because it felt like a great way to step back from other people and still feel like being fully reconnected with nature while still learning something new through with the help of the small and quick history lessons shared within the informative panels.

This could also be the reason why it seemed like there were not many tourists around, because the site is huge and there are really needed to be plenty of people to feel like in a crowd.

What was coming up next could be seen from where we were coming, but we still decided to make our way all the way down and admire everything more closely.

What can be seen in the images are the remains of the Small Limestone Sanctuary (also known as the Small Limestone Temple), and it represents an important monument of sacred architecture, located within the fortress's Sacred Area, which reflects the sacred organisation of Dacia's political, religious and military centre before the Roman conquest.

Sadly, the sacrosanct area to which it belongs had to deal with plenty of alterations and destruction during the Dacian-Roman Wars. Some archaeological research has also indicated post-conquest interventions and modifications, including traces of Roman wooden buildings and evidence of fires in certain nearby sectors.

A little bit further from the Small Limestone Temple, we reached The Big Circular Temple, which is, perhaps, the star of all the ruins currently resting in Sarmizegetusa Regia.

Not only does it represent a very interesting alignment of ruins, but it's also one of the most photographed parts of the site, often people believing the whole area is limited to these ruins only, but in reality, the whole surface covers a bit over 30,000 m² where genuine parts of history are resting.

The Large Circular Temple (often called the big circular sanctuary) is one of the most iconic and mysterious structures in the sacred area of Sarmizegetusa Regia, which was built during the Dacian Kingdom (around the 1st century BCE to 1st century CE under kings like Burebista and Decebalus), before the Roman conquest of Dacia in 106 CE.

Its exterior diameter is roughly 29.40 meters (about 100 Roman feet), while the foundation and base featured concentric circles of carved andesite blocks (104 exterior andesite blocks) combined with internal wooden elements.

Inside the main circular layout lies an apsidal-shaped wooden structure, which is believed to have functioned as the core altar or sanctuary. Even so, archaeologists and researchers noted that its primary axis or layout held astronomical/calendar significance, notably aligned around solar events like the midwinter solstice sunrise.

Similar to The Big Circular Temple, there was another one built nearby but of a smaller size, which, sadly, was mainly ruined during the wars and could not be reconstructed.

Although it's easy to get used to the circular shapes of the temples that once were part of these lands, there used to be some really small quadrilateral temples right next to the big and small circular temples mentioned before.

While one of them still has 16 of the 18 original andesite columns that were part of the building, the next one didn't get to enjoy the same luck because it ended up with only 5 of these after being heavily damaged during the Roman conquest.

As we were slowly making our way to an end, we managed to discover another genuine part of history, but this time it was a bit more than ruins or leftovers. Obviously, it still represents ruins of the past, but it was nice seeing more like a proper structure than pieces of it.

So, even though at first it might look like one of the famous ships from the Star Wars series, the Andesite Altar is one of the most famous and enigmatic monuments in the Sacred Zone of Sarmizegetusa Regia, which was discovered a bit later than the rest of the ruins, during some excavations taking place between 1958 and 1959.

Unlike smaller, rectangular hearths or altars typical of the Hallstatt and earlier Dacian periods, this monumental andesite structure is unique in the Dacian world, where archaeologists generally viewed it as a primary open-air sacrificial altar where major religious rituals of the Geto-Dacians took place, being surrounded by lots of ditches that are supposed to bring to the surface the blood of the sacrificed people.

Last but not least, we got to explore a bit of what used to be known as the "murus dacicus" (Dacian wall). Being a traditional Dacian fortification, it consisted of two parallel outer walls built from meticulously chiselled limestone blocks, with the inner gap filled with a mixture of packed earth, gravel, and smaller stones. Wooden beams were typically used to tie the stone walls together for structural stability.

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Although there were a couple more ruins here and there, they weren't marked in any way, nor did they have informative panels, so they might as well just belong to any of the others presented so far.

I think we ended up spending over an hour here, and it still felt like it wasn't enough due to the good weather and the nice surroundings of the nature that was all around our journey.

Walking among Sarmizegetusa's remains of history felt like stepping directly into a living myth and a place where ancient history, advanced astronomy, and raw natural beauty converged to create an unforgettable, deeply spiritual end to any Romanian journey. There are still debates regarding the strategic tension between its geographical isolation and its central political role, often being compared to how Machu Picchu functioned.

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To reach Sarmizegetusa Regia is relatively straightforward, but because of its isolated mountain setting, the final stretch requires a bit of attention.

No matter where you are coming from in Romania (such as Sibiu, Cluj-Napoca, or Timișoara via the A1 highway), you will need to exit towards the city of Orăștie, then make it on the county road DJ705A heading south toward Costești and Grădiștea de Munte. The total drive from the city to the ruins is about 40 kilometres. From here the road winds directly into the heart of the Orăștie Mountains, being left just 20 km until the destination.

Either way, do note that Sarmizegetusa Regia and Sarmizegetusa Ulpia Traiana are two separate places, the latest one being almost 2 hours away of driving from the first one. The difference between them is made by who lived within these lands: Sarmizegetusa Regia representing the Dacian mountain capital and Sarmizegetusa Ulpia Traiana the Roman capital.

In short, if you want to see where the Dacians lived, worshipped, and fiercely defended their freedom, visit the misty ruins of Sarmizegetusa Regia in the mountains. But if you want to see the Roman 'victory city' built on the spoils of that war, drive almost two hours down into the valley to Sarmizegetusa Ulpia Traiana.

^{Gabriela Travels is a Curator for Worldmappin and Hive Gaming communities, but also the FOUNDER of "Festival Mania" who started this community from the passion of attending various festivals and with the purpose of encouraging more people to explore festivals all around the world and share their experiences.
At the same time, Gabriela is an independent Graphic Design Freelancer since 2019 completing over 600+ orders in this time and collaborating with various businesses and people from all over the globe.
Additionally, Gabriela has her own corner on the internet since 2017 where she writes various articles for her blog, the most popular being the travel ones (350+ articles written on this field), but also approaching other topics as well, like game and book reviews, lets plays, movie and series reviews, photography posts, cooking recipes and more, boosting the total number of articles written to 850+ blog posts.
Gabriela is also a gamer since she was 11 years old and gaming remains one of her biggest passions along with traveling, owning a YouTube channel for each of the two.}

~ @GabrielaTravels ~

[//]:# ([//]:# (!worldmappin 45.62076 lat 23.30715 long A place with high historical importance that should be known by more people d3scr))