Sinaia is one of those places where Romania puts on its Sunday best. Nicknamed 'the Pearl of the Carpathians', this charming mountain town began as a monastic retreat in the 17th century and became the favourite summer resort of Romanian royalty and aristocracy when, in the late 19th century, King Carol I chose these slopes to build his summer residence: Peleș Castle, an absolute gem of European Romanticism.
Surrounded by conifer forests and overlooked by the peaks of the Bucegi Mountains, Sinaia combines an elegant centre of belle époque villas, historic hotels and a casino with the wild nature of the Carpathians just a step away: trails, waterfalls, a cable car climbing to over 2,000 metres and, in winter, ski slopes. All less than two hours by train from Bucharest, which makes it Romanians' quintessential mountain getaway and a must-stop on any trip around the country.
This guide covers the essentials of Sinaia with a practical eye: the unmissable Peleș Castle and its neighbour Pelișor, the peaceful Monastery that gave the town its name, how to get up the mountain by cable car, how to arrive by train and link it with the Prahova Valley or Brașov, and where to sleep and eat. Sinaia is the most beautiful gateway to the Romanian Carpathians and a must between Bucharest and Transylvania.
Sinaia owes its name and origin to Sinaia Monastery, founded in 1695 by the Wallachian nobleman Mihail Cantacuzino after a pilgrimage to Mount Sinai, in Egypt: hence the name. For almost two centuries, the monastery and a handful of houses were all there was in these mountain forests. The big leap came in the late 19th century: in 1873, the newly crowned prince (later king) Carol I of Romania, of the German House of Hohenzollern, fell in love with the area and decided to build his summer residence here. Peleș Castle went up between 1873 and 1883, a masterpiece of German Neo-Renaissance style that was also one of the first castles in Europe with its own electricity supply. The court and the aristocracy followed the king, and Sinaia became a fashionable summer resort, with villas, luxury hotels, a casino (1913) and the railway. In the 20th century, after the communist regime abolished the monarchy in 1947, Peleș was nationalised and closed for a time; today it's a museum welcoming hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, and Sinaia is still the queen of Romania's mountain resorts. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The historic heart of the Romanian south: Bucharest, the capital born on Wallachian land and marked by the kingdom and by communism, and the Southern Carpathians with the royal castle of Peleș at Sinaia and the Prahova valley.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before it was the 'Pearl of the Carpathians', Sinaia was no more than a wild corner of conifer forest on the slopes of the Bucegi massif, crossed by the Peleș stream. Its history begins with an act of faith. At the end of the seventeenth century, the Wallachian nobleman Mihail Cantacuzino, grand spatar (dignitary) of the principality, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and visited the famous Orthodox monastery of St Catherine, at the foot of Mount Sinai, in Egypt. Impressed by that place, on his return he decided to raise a monastery in these Romanian mountains and give it the same biblical name: Sinaia.
Sinaia Monastery was founded in 1695. For almost two centuries, the monastery and a handful of shepherds' and woodcutters' houses were all that existed here. It was a remote place on the way through, on the mountain road linking Wallachia with Transylvania through the Prahova Valley, then the border between the Ottoman world and the Habsburg empire.
The monastery, with its seventeenth-century 'Old' church and its walls, still stands in the heart of the town and keeps that spiritual origin. From it Sinaia took not only its name but its reason for existing: the town grew, literally, around this monastery born of a pilgrimage to the Sinai desert.
The great turn in Sinaia's history came with the Romanian monarchy. In 1866, a German prince of the house of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was called to govern the newly united principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia: he would become Carol I, first as prince and, after independence in 1877-1878, as king of the new Kingdom of Romania in 1881.
Carol I fell for the mountain landscapes of the Prahova Valley, which reminded him of his native Germany. In 1873 he decided to build his summer residence at Sinaia, and so Peleș Castle was born, raised between 1873 and 1883 in a spectacular German neo-Renaissance style, with towers, timber framing and an interior of overflowing luxury. It was cutting-edge work for its time: one of the first castles in Europe with its own electricity supply, central heating and even a lift. The more intimate Pelișor Castle (1899-1903) was built next to it later, the residence of the future king Ferdinand and queen Marie.
With the arrival of the court, Sinaia was completely transformed. The Romanian aristocracy and upper middle class followed the monarch to the mountains, and the old monastic hamlet became a fashionable summer resort. The railway arrived, luxury hotels opened, along with elegant villas, a park (Dimitrie Ghica) and, in 1913, a sumptuous casino inspired by the one in Monte Carlo. In a few decades, Sinaia went from a lost hermitage to a royal spa town.
The choice of Peleș as the royal family's summer residence also carried enormous symbolic weight. Carol I was a foreign monarch, called to govern a young country that had just been born of the union of Wallachia and Moldavia, and he needed to root the new dynasty in the country. Building a splendid castle in the heart of the Carpathians, in a setting of undeniable beauty, was also a way of asserting the legitimacy and the prestige of the Romanian monarchy before Europe. Peleș was not just a whim: it was a statement of intent, the summer seat of a kingdom that wanted to show itself modern, cultured and a match for the courts of the continent.
In the first decades of the twentieth century, Sinaia lived its peak as the summer resort of royalty and the Romanian elite. Peleș was the setting for receptions, concerts and affairs of state; agreements were signed in its halls and distinguished guests received. The town, with its casino, its hotels and its cosmopolitan atmosphere, was the place to be in summer.
The First World War hit the region: the Prahova Valley was a combat zone and the court had to take refuge. From that war, high on the neighbouring Bucegi massif, came the monumental Caraiman Cross, raised in the 1920s in memory of the fallen soldiers. After the war, with the formation of Greater Romania, Sinaia went on being the kings' summer residence.
One figure marked these years in particular: queen Marie, granddaughter of queen Victoria of England and of tsar Alexander II of Russia, a cultured, charismatic and very popular woman, who left her personal stamp on Pelișor Castle, much of whose art nouveau decoration she designed. In its famous Golden Room, lined with gilded thistle leaves, queen Marie died in 1938. It was the twilight of an era: a few years later, the Second World War and the postwar years would change the fate of Romania and of its castles for good.
The end of the Second World War brought the Soviet occupation and the installation of the communist regime. In 1947, king Michael I was forced to abdicate and go into exile, and the monarchy was abolished. The royal family's property, including the castles of Peleș and Pelișor, was nationalised by the state. For a time, Peleș ran as a museum, although the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu closed it to the public in the 1980s, suspicious of it, and reserved it for official use, leaving it half abandoned.
After the fall of communism in 1989 and the Romanian Revolution, Peleș reopened as a national museum and recovered its splendour. In the following decades the complex dispute over ownership was also settled: the castle was formally returned to the Royal House of Romania and then bought back by the state, which keeps it as a museum open to the public. Today it is one of the most visited monuments in the country, with hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.
Sinaia, for its part, has reinvented itself as one of Romania's main mountain resorts, in summer — hiking in the Bucegi, a cable car to more than 2,000 metres, cultural tourism around the castles and the monastery — and in winter, with its ski runs at Cota 1400 and 2000. The 'Pearl of the Carpathians' keeps its belle époque air of a royal spa town and remains, more than three centuries after that monastery brought from Sinai, one of the best loved and most beautiful destinations in the country.
