Charles III's Romanian Rhapsody

The allure of Transylvania for Britain's King

In the days ahead, Charles III, the sovereign of the United Kingdom and 14 other realms around the world, is expected to take a private holiday in Romania.  Why there, one might wonder, and why now?

Charles as Prince of Wales setting out on a hike during a Romanian springtime visit

His attachment to the pristine countryside and medieval villages in southeast Europe near the Carpathian Mountains actually has deep roots and fits logically with his decades-long goal of promoting the harmony of man with nature.

His first involvement came in 1988 when a friend, Jessica Douglas-Home, alerted him that Romania’s Communist dictator, Nicolai Ceaucescu, planned to raze some eight thousand traditional villages and replace them with “agro-industrial centers.” “Prince Charles minds terribly about buildings,” Jessica told me. “I said, `Make a speech.’” Despite initial resistance from Britain’s Foreign Office, Charles got the green light to speak out in April 1989, when he condemned the planned “wholesale destruction” of Romania’s “cultural and human heritage.”

The unspoiled Transylvanian countryside King Charles has worked to preserve

In a letter to Jessica afterward, Charles said that he wouldn’t have been true to himself “if I did stay quiet instead of taking the risk and accepting the challenge.” His message resonated behind the Iron Curtain, and the dictator’s plans were scuttled. As the Soviet empire began to collapse, Ceausescu himself was overthrown and executed that December, when the country began evolving toward democracy.  

Nearly a decade later, Jessica Douglas-Home reached out to Charles once more, this time to help preserve the traditional way of life in Romania’s bucolic Transylvania region. She persuaded him to accompany her on a private visit in 1997. Over the coming days, he became transfixed by what Jessica described as “fortified, frescoed churches, cobbled streetscapes, stuccoed and gabled houses, fields, woods and valleys filled with wildflowers, rare birds, and butterflies.”

King Charles’s renovated house in the remote hamlet of Zalanpatak in Romania

Transylvania reminded Charles of England “as it would have been six hundred to eight hundred years ago” before the Industrial Revolution diminished the natural landscape. Unlike Britain, there are no hedges or fences, cows wander freely through the villages, and farmers use scythes to cut their fields.