Gilau sits where the flat plain of the Somesul Mic river meets the first hills of the Apuseni mountains, about fifteen kilometres west of Cluj-Napoca, in Transylvania, and the hill called Dealul Cetatii, which simply means Fortress Hill, rises almost on the edge of the town, about a kilometre away. The town has nearly eight thousand people, and from the road you can see the high, forested ridges of the Apuseni to the west.
Gilau has long been a strategic point, because it guards the route from the Transylvanian plateau into the mountains and on towards the plain of western Romania, along the old road to Oradea. A fortress stood here in the Middle Ages, and a castle belonging to great Transylvanian noble families stood in the town.
The mountains behind hold one of Europe's oldest mining regions. At Rosia Montana, a few hours away to the south-west, the Romans mined gold at a place they called Alburnus Maior after they conquered Dacia in AD 106, and they left galleries cut by hand and wax writing tablets found in the tunnels. The Rosia Montana Mining Landscape was inscribed by UNESCO in 2021. The Apuseni are also full of caves, karst plateaux, waterfalls and beech forest, and the villages of the Motzi people, with their tall wooden houses and shepherd traditions, are among the most distinctive in Romania.
The road west from Cluj, the E60 to Oradea, is busy and often congested with lorries, so it is better to take the smaller road through Gilau and along the lake of Gilau, which climbs into the hills towards Belis with a series of pleasant bends, forests and views. Surfaces vary, with patches and some potholes, and traffic is heavier at weekends when people from Cluj head for the lakes. The best months are May to October, and winters bring snow and ice in the hills.
Gilau has fuel stations, shops and cafes, and Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania's lively university city, has everything else, with a big old centre, a cathedral on the main square and excellent restaurants. Try papanasi, fried doughnuts with sour cream and jam, and a bowl of sour soup, ciorba, in a small local place.