Like a Bond villain's hideout, these creepy caverns seem an apt place for hatching world domination; the most popular is Rolf Mine, some 40m-deep (13 storeys high).
To get to it pass through the crashed UFO-style entrance, then, feeling like an extra in an X-Box game, shuffle down a space-age stairway past a serenely lit shrine (where each morning a priest said prayers for those unfortunate miners about to be lowered by rope and basket into the chilly abyss). Your first glance from the slippery gallery into Rolf Mine is highly vertiginous, peering down at...well, a billiards table, table tennis area, carousel and bowling alley, far, far below. Oh, and Gollumesque boats that paddle around an island in a spectral green pond...all in all, very weird. Fortunately for you these days, there's a lift, or you can take the stairs.
The mine is about 1km north from the centre, towards Cluj; a sign points 200m off the road. If you’re driving from Cluj, veer left at the first fork in the village (a sign points to ‘centru ’). By the time you read this a zoo should be operating – at surface level – in the same complex.
