The translucent roof
Covering every seat and lit in colour at night.
MC 26 — CC BY 3.0 · MC 26 — CC BY 3.0 · Nuță Lucian from Cluj-Napoca, Romania — CC BY 2.0 · Gabysor — CC BY-SA 4.0
Cluj Arena is a stadium of about thirty thousand seats on the bank of the Someș west of the centre, opened in 2011 in place of an old ground of the 1960s, and **the first stadium in Romania to be given UEFA's category four rating**. The building is among the cleanest pieces of recent Romanian construction: a white structure with a translucent roof covering every seat, and night lighting that colours the outer face. It hosts Universitatea Cluj and matches of the national side. But what Romanians know it for is the **Untold festival** — one of the largest electronic music festivals in Europe, held here every August and drawing hundreds of thousands, turning the stadium and the park around it into an enormous site for four days. **If you are visiting Cluj in August, book your hotel very far ahead** — the city fills completely and prices multiply.
Covering every seat and lit in colour at night.
The Someș bank and lake between stadium and centre.
Aleea Stadionului 2, Cluj-Napoca
The Zoological Museum, ClujA university zoological museum belonging to Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj, its10 minutes walk4.8
National Museum of Transylvanian HistoryTransylvania's memory in a Baroque palace west of Union Square: the National His15 minutes walk4.3
The Mikes HouseA listed noble townhouse on the northern side of Museum Square in Cluj-Napoca, c15 minutes walk4.9
The Matthias Corvinus HouseA fifteenth-century stone house in a narrow lane near Union Square, where **Matt16 minutes walk4.8
Romulus Vuia Ethnographic ParkRomania's first open-air museum: founded by the ethnographer Romulus Vuia in 19216 minutes walk4.7An electronic music festival held in Cluj every August since 2015, drawing more than three hundred thousand people over four days — close to half the city's population. Its effect on an ordinary visitor is substantial and worth planning around: hotels are booked months ahead and their prices multiply, the airport and trains fill, some central streets close, and nights are loud across a wide area around the stadium. If the city itself is your object, avoid that week; if the festival is, book very early. The rest of August is entirely normal.