Banita Keys

Banita Keys are situated 8 km North of Petrosani, in the corridor Băniţa-Merisor-Baru, where the Petrosani Depression joins the north of the Haţegului Depression, where the Jiu basin make way in the North, to the river Strei and the water streames that it gathers from Sureanu and Retezat Mountains. Fix under Merisor pass (the watershed between Jiu and Strei Basins) and to the North of Sureanu, several threads of water come together and flow to the South to the Eastern Jiu as Banita creek. A little lower, Banita creek meets the limestone area.

To the Banita Keys you can easily reach both by train and by car. By car, coming from Petrosani, you must go to the winding roads that climb to Merisor pass. By train, coming from Petrosani, you must go down to Pestera Bolii halt and go up on the same winding roads on the national road DN 66, Petrosani-Simeria.

The keys are quite short (250-300 m) but extremely spectacular, the most beautiful part is the first one. Banita creek has carved a narrow corridor and slightly meandered in patches between the high walls of white limestone. In fact it is a former cave whose ceiling crashed down. In the river bed and in the lower limestone part, the walls are beautifully sculpted and rounded by the river waters, which in some places has dug some extremely spectacular marmite (hollows in the rock with spoon / ladle shape, but with sizes of tens of centimeters or even meters). On the hill that rises more than 200 meters above the keys, there is a Dacian fortress, Banita Citadel (Fortress). The citadel was part of the defense Dacian system from the Sureanu Mountains, serving Sarmizegetuza Regia.