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ContactDeva is a small Transylvanian city built around a single, unmissable fact: a volcanic hill rises straight out of the middle of it, and a fortress sits on top. The cable car saves your legs, but the walk down through beech forest is the better half. Most travellers use it as a bed for Corvin Castle, eighteen kilometres away — which undersells a town with a Renaissance palace in its park and a legend about a dragon.
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Deva is a Mureș-valley city crowned by a ruined fortress on a volcanic hill, with a Renaissance palace at its foot and the Hunedoara castles within day-trip range.
The hill is called Cetățuia, and it is a volcanic neck — the plug of a long-extinct volcano, which is why it rises so abruptly and so steeply from otherwise flat ground beside the Mureș. The fortress on top has been there in some form since the 13th century, though what stands now is largely ruin and reconstruction, and the walk around the ramparts takes ten minutes. What you come for is the view: the whole city laid out below in red tile and grey block, the Mureș cutting through it, and the Apuseni hills folding away to the north. A cable car runs from the park at the foot to near the summit; the forest path up takes about 45 minutes and passes a series of switchbacks through beech and hornbeam.
A stone tower of the Deva fortress rising above the road that climbs the hill
At the bottom of the hill, inside the same park, sits the Magna Curia — also called the Bethlen Castle — a Renaissance palace built in the 16th century by the Bethlen family and now the county museum. It is a low, arcaded building with a painted facade, easy to walk past and worth an hour. The pedestrian street of Bulevardul 1 Decembrie 1918 runs from there into the centre, lined with cafes and a small theatre, and this is where the city spends its evenings. Deva is also the practical base for Hunedoara: Corvin Castle is eighteen kilometres away and reachable by local bus or a cheap taxi, so you can see the fortress in the morning and the castle in the afternoon without moving hotels.
Late September to October, when the beech woods on the hill turn and the summer heat has gone out of the climb.
Near the pedestrian street in the centre, within walking distance of both the park and the cable car station.
Order ciorbă de burtă or a plate of mici with mustard and bread at one of the terrace restaurants on the pedestrian street; the county is also good for plum brandy, taken as a small glass before the meal.
Take the cable car up and walk down, not the reverse — the descent through the forest is pleasant, while the ascent on foot is an unshaded slog in anything but cool weather.
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