Maramureș

Eight churches in this county carry UNESCO listing and they share a distinctive silhouette: a low, dark, horizontally logged body under a very tall, very steep shingled roof, from which a slender spire rises far out of proportion to the building beneath it — oak logs notched and interlocked at the corners, wooden pegs rather than nails holding roof and spire, a tradition that let villages raise a church without the iron or stone this mountainous, historically poor region could not afford to import. The effect is of a small church wearing an enormous hat, and it is unmistakable. Șurdești and Plopiș are the tall ones, and Șurdești's spire was for a time the highest wooden church tower in the world. Ieud has two churches, the older of which is the one to see. Budești holds chain mail and a helmet on its wall, kept from earlier centuries. Desești and Poienile Izei have the best-preserved interior painting, applied directly to the logs, and Poienile Izei's is famously vivid on the subject of consequences. Rogoz, further west, has an unusual asymmetric eave and carved horse-head brackets. You will not see all eight and should not try; three in a day, spread along the Iza valley, is a good day. Several are kept locked with the key at a nearby house, and asking is normal — the person who unlocks it will often stay and explain, and a contribution to the church is the right response. Dress modestly and remember these are in use.

The cemetery at Săpânța, near the northern border, is the county's most visited single sight and it earns it. Beginning in the 1930s a local woodcarver started making grave markers that departed entirely from convention: tall oak crosses painted a strong blue, each with a naive painted panel showing the person at their work or at the moment of their death, and beneath it a short rhymed epitaph written in the first person, in plain village language, and often extremely funny. A shepherd complains about his sheep. A mother-in-law is remembered with candour. The tradition continued after the founder's death under an apprentice and the cemetery is still in use, which is what keeps it from being morbid — it is a living churchyard that happens to be a folk-art collection. Elsewhere in the county the same carving instinct shows in the gates. A Maramureș gate is a monumental structure of oak posts and a shingled lintel, carved with twisted rope motifs, sun discs, wolves' teeth and the tree of life, and traditionally it announced the standing of the household behind it. New ones are still being made. Bârsana monastery, a modern complex built entirely in the traditional idiom, is where most visitors photograph the style at its most concentrated.

From Vișeu de Sus, a narrow-gauge forestry railway runs up the Vaser valley behind a working steam locomotive — one of the last commercial forestry lines of its kind in Europe, built to bring timber down and now carrying visitors up as well. The journey climbs for hours through a forested gorge with no road alongside it, stopping where the line stops, and it is the sort of thing that sounds like a novelty and turns out to be one of the best half-days in the country. Book ahead in summer. Beyond it, the county's two main valleys are the drives to make: the Iza, which strings together most of the wooden churches and the villages that feel least altered, and the Mara, which climbs towards the pass and is the prettier road. Both are best taken slowly with no fixed plan, stopping when a gate or a haystack or an open church door suggests it. The mountain pass south towards the rest of Transylvania is a genuinely scenic drive and, with the county's remoteness, a reminder of why this region stayed distinct: everything here is behind a ridge. That road comes down towards Cluj, which is the usual hinge between this northern country and the Saxon south.

Two things are worth saying plainly. The first is that this is a materially poor county and its way of life is changing quickly — young people leave for work abroad, new houses go up in a style that owes nothing to the old one, and machinery is replacing scythes year by year. Visiting a place because it is old-fashioned carries an obvious risk of treating people as scenery, and the correction is practical rather than sentimental: ask before photographing anyone, especially at work or at church; buy directly from the person who made the thing; stay in village guesthouses rather than in the towns, because that is where the money lands; and accept the plum brandy you will be offered, or at least touch it to your lips. The second is that the region rewards slowness. Two nights minimum, three better. On timing, June is exceptional — hay-making, wildflowers, long light — and September is close behind. Winter is beautiful and hard, with snow closing the higher roads. This county pairs naturally with the painted monasteries to the east, which the Suceava guide covers, and the trip-planning guide argues for taking the two as one northern leg rather than as separate expeditions.