On the list of some guilty pleasures I have while exploring the surroundings, there are the water towers that have always fascinated me. I am not sure why, as in fact they all had their main purpose to only store water for the city/villages nearby, just as their name suggests, but they always looked so cool and some of them also offered a great view over the city/villages.
Some of these look quite boring and don't really catch the attention in any way, but I'd lie by saying that I wasn't blessed to see some really cool ones during my trips in Romania, which were definitely not a few.
So, with no further introduction, today's travel post is about the water tower from Cugir, Romania.
This water tower not only looked absolutely fantastic for the current times since it was initially raised in 1903, but also enjoyed some massive restoration around 2011 when it was also declared the main monument of the city of Cugir, which aimed to attract more tourists to its territory.
While most of the water towers are meant to take care of the city/village they are part of, keep in mind that the one from Cugir had a whole different purpose, as it was meant to produce energy that was then used to illuminate and electrify several of the Wasserliner factory's installations that had previously been powered by water or steam.
It was actually my first time visiting a water tower that was not fully dedicated to the locals, but to an iron factory. The name of the factory is also not too popular for what Romanians are used to, but back then, these lands were mainly occupied by Czechs, Austrians, Hungarians and Italians.
The total height of the water tower is 25 meters, and the renovations brought to it respected the way it looked when it was initially built.
Sadly, there must have been something happening during this process, because the actual renovations took place only on the surface, while the interior, which we will discover later on, is only ruins, with the informative panels completely missing as well.
I actually found some online news written back in 2011 when this tower was under renovation that the locals donated during the process of renovation because they truly wanted to see it back in shape and added as a destination by more tourists out there, there also being the mention to include it on the UNESCO list. Sadly, this never happened, and while it looks pretty fascinating from the outside, things are not the same when it comes to the inside or wanting to read some information on the panels that were supposed to tell its story.
Additionally, even if the path to it looks pretty clean, once you approach the water tower and want to surround it for a proper exploration, you will quickly observe how nature slowly re-claims it, because there are plenty of proofs that no one was recently here to cut down the grass or keep away the trees from windows or a secret passage that I barely spotted.
But as a person who gets extremely excited when visiting new places and is ready to risk a lot of things by exploring the ruins to their deepest form, I also tried my luck and opened the front door of the tower, ready to climb shaky stairs or inhale lots of dust.
Happy or not, that was not the case, because I was shocked to see that there was no renovation made on the inside of the tower. There were, actually, no stairs at all to climb, but only some pieces of what I believe used to be the system that ran with the help of the water fall, which was meant to produce electricity for the factory and the locals of Cugir.
I'd lie by saying that I did not feel a bitter taste, because I really wanted to have more images and stories to share from the inside of the tower as well, but I still felt grateful for being able to open the door and satisfy my curiosity, since most of the abandoned water towers usually have these doors blocked.
So, after a couple more minutes spent admiring the view of the city, we followed all the way down to where we parked the car, with a big smile on our faces that we managed to reach this place that was on our must-see list for quite a while.
A thing that I must mention, though, is that reaching the water tower from Cugir is not one of the easiest paths one can follow, because you will end up driving on some very norrow paths which become a serious challenge if you meet another car coming from the opposite direction, there are no parking spots other than in front of the locals' countyards, and the path you need to walk on, is very inclined and requires a lot of effort, especially if it's done on a hot day of the summer as we did.
Happily, the indications given by Google Maps were accurate, and whether you try your luck driving as close to the water tower as possible or simply make it on foot, you will reach a place that shares a lot of good energy through its presence, as well as blesses you with a fantastic view over the city of Cugir.
Gabriela Travels is a Curator for Worldmappin and Hive Gaming communities, but also the FOUNDER of "Festival Mania" who started this community from the passion of attending various festivals and with the purpose of encouraging more people to explore festivals all around the world and share their experiences. At the same time, Gabriela is an independent Graphic Design Freelancer since 2019 completing over 600+ orders in this time and collaborating with various businesses and people from all over the globe. Additionally, Gabriela has her own corner on the internet since 2017 where she writes various articles for her blog, the most popular being the travel ones (350+ articles written on this field), but also approaching other topics as well, like game and book reviews, lets plays, movie and series reviews, photography posts, cooking recipes and more, boosting the total number of articles written to 900+ blog posts. Gabriela is also a gamer since she was 11 years old and gaming remains one of her biggest passions along with traveling, owning a YouTube channel for each of the two.
~ @GabrielaTravels ~
[//]:# ([//]:# (!worldmappin 45.81936 lat 23.37762 long A not so popular water tower but which still resists in the 21st century and looks great d3scr))
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