Bistrița

Bistrița is the capital of Bistrița-Năsăud County in northern Transylvania, Romania.

Understand
Bistriţa was founded in the early 13th century by German settlers and (due to its location on the main trading route with Moldavia) became one of Transylvania's major Medieval cities. Several interesting sites from that time survive in the city's old quarter. Some tourists are also attracted by the fact that the town was mentioned in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula.

By train
Bistriţa is on a secondary railway and gets limited service: a few local trains, several regional trains (note there are different operators) from Cluj (a three hours trip) and a night train from Bucharest (nine hours) via Brasov. Schedules can be found using the online route planner from infrastructure operator CFR.

By car
Bistriţa is located on the DN17 road linking Transylvania with Southern Bucovina.

By bus
There are frequent buses from Cluj (two hours travel time), three-four buses from Suceava (four hours and half), Târgu Mureş (three hours) and one bus from Iaşi (seven hours). Some of their schedules are available on autogari.ro.

Get around
The relatively compact old quarter can be visited on foot. The rest of the city is covered by several minibus lines operated by Transmixt.