The Land Before Time

Transylvania is a place of mythic beauty. Kate Eshelby visits two chic new properties that tap in to the weight of history

- Kate Eshelby

IN THE EARLY AFTERNOON, my family and I strode out of a beech forest and onto a sweep of high grassland, where an expanse of oak trees stood like solitary guards. A picnic was waiting for us, with goulash cooking over a fire and a table laid with a bright, cherrycolored cloth.

This was the Breite, one of Europe's bestpreserved wood pastures, a type of forest that is managed through grazing. It was here, deep in Transylvania, that the Saxons-Germanic people who arrived in Romania in the 12th century-used to come to fatten their pigs on the plentiful acorns. Some of the Breite's oldest trees, with deep grooves in their bark, have towered since the Middle Ages. "These furrows are home to the great capricorn beetle," Peter Suciu, our guide, told us. The insects are rare in other parts of Europe that have lost their old trees, the beetles' preferred habitat.

Transylvania, Romania's largest and most famous region, is a place where blacksmiths still mold metal, shepherds live alone with their flocks, and hay is cut with scythes. It's a land of villages with terra-cotta-tiled homes and vast wildernesses where bears, wolves, and lynx patrol primeval forests.

In the clearing, Suciu showed us how to cook slănină, cured slabs of pork fat, on sticks over the flames. "This is one of our most popular foods," he said as we dripped its delicious, hot, golden juice onto hunks of freshly baked bread. We had met Suciu earlier that day, when he collected us from Bethlen Estates Transylvania, in the medieval village of Criș, where I was staying with my husband and two young sons. Only in the past several years have accommodations opened in these places, offering travelers the chance to experience a way of life that feels bygone.