Timișoara

Balancing that out is a genuinely charming core. Sat in a neat cradle of the Bega River, it's formed by a series of concentric walls that once kept out the Habsburgs and then kept out the Ottomans. Only a few bastions remain of the old fortifications, so you can stroll past them and into the maze of squares, streets, and parklands that give the town the epithet of 'Little Vienna'. That's where you'll find Union Square and Liberty Square, watched over the bold frontages of the Romanian National Opera, one of Timișoara's cultural trump cards.

Private charter flights to Timișoara can also be a way into the Banat corner of Transylvania. That holds secrets like the Roman spa town of Buziaș, where Hungarian kings once went to unwind. And it's got the best hiking in western Romania, mainly thanks to the sprawling reserves of the Cheile Carasului National Park, a land of pine forests and canyons at the tail end of the bear-stalked Semenic Mountains.