On a hill above the Strei valley near the village of Pui, in south-western Transylvania, faint earthworks mark one of the many small Roman military posts that guarded the province of Dacia after Trajan conquered it in AD 106. The Romans held Dacia for about a hundred and seventy years, and they ringed it with forts, watchtowers and roads; in 2024 a long series of these sites was added to the World Heritage list as the Frontiers of the Roman Empire in Dacia. At Dealul Robului there is nothing grand to see, just the shape of the ground under grass and trees, but the position tells you everything: a clear view down the valley, which was one of the routes into the heart of the province.
That heart was close by. A short ride west lies Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa, the Roman capital of Dacia, with the remains of its forum and amphitheatre in a quiet field, and up in the Orăștie mountains to the north-east are the fortresses of the Dacian kings who fought Rome. The Hațeg Country around Pui is also a UNESCO Global Geopark, thanks to its dinosaurs. In the early twentieth century Baron Franz Nopcsa, a brilliant and eccentric local aristocrat, found that the dinosaurs here were unusually small and proposed that they had evolved on an island, an idea now widely accepted. In the village of Densuș, the little stone church, built partly of Roman stones, is one of the oldest in Romania still in use.
The main road, DN66, runs through Pui on its way from Hațeg to Petroșani and the Jiu valley, with a good surface and steady truck traffic. South of the valley the Retezat mountains rise steeply, a national park since 1935, with more than fifty glacial lakes; side roads lead up into their valleys, narrowing to gravel as they go. East of Petroșani the Transalpina, the highest road in Romania, climbs over the Parâng mountains, but that is a high-summer adventure, closed for much of the year.
Hațeg, about fifteen kilometres away, is the town for fuel, shops and restaurants. Pui itself has basic shops and guesthouses offer home cooking: soups, grilled meat, polenta and fresh cheese. The land around is farmland and orchards, and in late summer roadside stalls sell plums and apples straight from the trees.