The Arges County

The county has a surface of 6,826 sq.km and a population of 681,133 inhabitants.

The most part of its territory is the upper basin of the Arges River from which it took its name and keeps it from the beginning till now.

Its relief is a varied one steps down from North to South, from an altitude of up to 2,500 m to 160 m above sea level. In the Fagaras Mountains there is the Moldoveanu (2,534 m above sea level), the highest peak of the Romanian Carpathians.

The Arges county is crossed by a lot of rivers and valleys of the hydrographic basins of the Arges, Vedea and Olt Rivers, the length of the main rivers being of about 1,000 km. The Arges River is 140 km long in this county.

In the mountain and hilly zone there are a lot of natural ice lakes as well as man-made lakes.

The flora, fauna and soil are characteristic to the temperate climate and to the forms of relief. To protect some rare species of flora and fauna, as well as some valuable elements of the landscape in this county they were named monuments of nature and are protected in natural reservations. Among them, the main is the Piatra Craiului reservation of flora and fauna.

The natural elements, valuable historic places and modern lines of communication back the Arges county as a tourist zone of national level.

The capital city of this county is the municipality of Pitesti, a town which offers to its visitors a lot of interesting places. The Romanian and foreign tourists who visit this county have to go to see Curtea de Arges, one of the most precious treasory of Romanian mediaeval art and architecture. Situated in the central part of Romania, near by the Carpathians, about 150 km far from Bucharest, Curtea de Arges was the first capital city of our country in 1330 and here there are valuable art monuments, a true museum of the Romanian history in a wonderful landscape.

The Princely Church, built by the Basarab family in the XIV-th century as a Byzantine classical church, is a valuable Romanian mediaeval monument of art and architecture. Here there are frescos from three different periods of time but the most valuable is the one dating back from rulers Vladislav I Vlaicu and Radu I.

The monastery of Curtea de Arges built in stone of Albesti, by Neagoe Basarab (1512 -1521) is one of the finest historic monuments of Romania. Its fame which is connected to the legend of Master Manole is known abroad too.

Only a few kilometers far from this town is a wild, natural and picturesque landscape there is the castle of Vlad Tepes known today as Dracula.

The Transfagarasan high-way, the grandest work of this kind in Romania, is situated at 2,034 m above sea level, with a tunnel of 845 m long under the Negoiu and Moldoveanu Peaks, is a wonderful way with a picturesque view over the Arges Valley.