By the middle of the XVIII-th century, after generations of building and rebuilding, this was the largest aristocratic residence in Transylvania, owned by a family that had been near the centre of regional power for as long as anyone could remember. People called it “the Versailles of Transylvania”. Formal gardens, a theatre, a library, room after room designed for exactly the kind of gatherings that decided things back then, and for once the nickname wasn’t really an exaggeration.

The last of the family to live here was Count Miklós Bánffy, who managed to be a politician, a novelist, a set designer and an opera director, apparently without choosing between them. Then in October 1944, German forces retreating through Transylvania ahead of the front passed through the castle on their way out, and left it burning. Some accounts say it wasn’t just a retreat getting messy, that the burning was deliberate, aimed at Bánffy specifically over his politics. Either way, the furniture, the library, generations of family portraits, all of it gone in a few hours. Not even an enemy did that. People who were supposed to be on the same side did.

After the war, the state took the place over and handed it to the Ministry of Agriculture, which turned it into a machinery and tractor station. The building where the family had lived became offices and housing for workers, the old kitchen turned into a canteen, the stables into some kind of club. Whatever the rooms had been for before, they were for something else now, and nobody seemed to be keeping track of which was which.

Then in 1963, of all things, a film crew showed up. They were shooting “Pădurea spânzuraților”, a Romanian film that would go on to win Best Director at Cannes, and they used the castle as one of their locations. At some point they set part of the building on fire on purpose, for a scene, and it did considerably more damage than anyone intended. 

The castle stayed in the family on paper long after the family stopped living in it. Its last owner was Katalin Bánffy, the Count’s daughter, who spent most of her life far from Bonțida, in Tangier, and who, among other things, translated her father’s great Transylvanian trilogy into English so the rest of the world could read it. She died in early 2025, at the age of 100. Back in 2007 she had handed the building over to Transylvania Trust on a 49 year concession, and they have spent the years since trying to bring it back, room by room, on what is clearly nowhere near the budget a project this size would normally need. The work has its small milestones. In 2021, for the first time in about seventy years, the main building had proper glass windows again.

You notice this the moment you start walking through. Some rooms have been brought back close to how they looked, plasterwork patched, paint matched as well as anyone reasonably can. Then the next room is exactly as it was left decades ago, no roof, walls open straight to the sky, weeds growing where there used to be a floor. There isn’t much transition between the two. You’re just suddenly in a different building.

When the castle comes back to life: TIFF & Electric Castle

For a few weeks each summer, though, the place fills up again anyway. Part of the Transylvania International Film Festival happens here, the biggest film festival in the country, based up in Cluj. They project films onto the outside walls of the castle in the evenings, and for the opening weekend the whole place turns into something they call Weekend la Castel, with screenings, concerts and people wandering the grounds until late.

Then later in the summer it becomes one of the main stages for Electric Castle, one of the bigger music festivals in this part of Europe, the kind that brings in headliners you’d recognise and tens of thousands of people to a village that normally has a few thousand. A share of what Electric Castle makes goes back into fixing the castle, which is part of why the roof and windows are in the state they are now and not worse. For those few weeks there’s noise, light, crowds, all the things the building was originally made for, even if it’s only half there to hold them.

Most of the year, none of that is happening, and the castle just sits there between the village and the river, half restored and half not, waiting for whatever comes next. Nobody seems entirely sure what that is yet.

Getting there

Bonțida sits about 35km from Cluj-Napoca, on the road towards Gherla and Dej. By car, it’s the E576 then the county road 161, and the castle is right in the centre of the village, across from the reformed church, next to the school. There’s free parking out front, including space for buses and motorbikes.

You can also get there by train, though the station is around 3.5km from the castle, roughly a 40 minute walk, so most people just drive.

Visiting

The castle is open every day of the year, including holidays. In summer (1 April to 31 October) it’s 10:00 to 19:00, in winter (1 November to 31 March) 10:00 to 18:00, with the last tickets sold an hour before closing.

A full adult ticket is 15 lei. Students between 14 and 25 pay 10 lei with a valid ID, and entry is free for children under 14, for visitors with disabilities and their companions, and for journalists who let the castle know in advance. You can pay in cash or by card at the entrance.

There’s a café on site, the Cultural Café, open Tuesday to Sunday in summer and weekends only in winter. Dogs and other pets are allowed on the grounds as long as they’re on a lead.

More info on banffycastle.ro.

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This article is also available in French:

Le château de Bánffy : le Versailles devenu ruine

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