Pitești is the kind of city most riders pass through on the way somewhere else, and the somewhere else is usually the Transfăgărășan. The famous road over the Făgăraș mountains begins north of here, beyond Curtea de Argeș, and the hills of Argeș county around Albota and Mareș, just south-west of Pitești, are where many people start the day.
The landscape has a Roman layer that few people notice. In the early third century, the Romans built a frontier line known as the Limes Transalutanus, an earth rampart with a ditch and a chain of forts running for some two hundred and thirty kilometres from the Danube north toward the mountains, east of the river Olt. Its course passed through this part of Argeș, and sites around here belong to the ensemble of Roman frontier remains in Romania. Most of it is now just a low ridge in the fields, easy to miss, but it was once the eastern edge of the empire's hold on this region.
The region has more recent fame, too. Mioveni, just east of Pitești, is home to the Dacia car factory, which has built cars here since the late 1960s and remains one of the country's largest employers. Pitești itself has a strong wine tradition: the Ștefănești vineyards nearby produce well-known wines. Curtea de Argeș, to the north, was one of the early capitals of Wallachia, and its monastery, with its intricate carved facade, is one of Romania's most beautiful churches.
From here, the Transfăgărășan, the DN7C, climbs past the Poienari fortress, the real castle of Vlad the Impaler, perched on a cliff above the Argeș gorge, and up to Lake Bâlea at over two thousand metres, through a series of hairpins and tunnels. It is usually open only from early July to the end of October, depending on snow, and is busy on summer weekends, so go early on a weekday for the best experience.
Bradu, around six kilometres away, and Pitești have plenty of fuel stations, shops and restaurants. Before heading north, eat a hearty meal of mici, grilled minced-meat rolls, with mustard and bread, washed down with a cold drink, and fill the tank: the mountain sections of the route have few fuel stations.