Pelișor Castle

Pelișor forms a compact palace set beside Peleș Castle and exhibits an exterior that mixes timber-frame, or fachwerk-type, elements with traditional Romanian decorative motifs. Two sandstone towers rise from the structure and are finished with brightly colored tile cladding that draws on the roof patterns of Bukovina churches. Contemporary descriptions record the building as small in scale, with published room counts varying between seventy and ninety-nine spaces.

The principal public space is the central salon known as the Golden Room. Its walls are covered with gilded stucco worked into leaf designs inspired by the thistle or burdock plant, and the ceiling contains a skylight shaped like a Celtic cross, admitting daylight into the salon. Furniture and decorative surfaces in this room combine Celtic knotwork and Byzantine-inspired ornament. Adjacent to the central salon, the Hall of Honor is lined with oak panelling and is described in some accounts as rising through three storeys, lit by tall windows beneath a glass or stained-glass ceiling that functions as a skylight.

Private apartments include a Golden Bedroom whose furnishings were carved in linden wood at local workshops in 1909 and are decorated with Celtic interlace and Byzantine animal motifs. The queen’s suite includes a chapel entered through a gilded arch and lined with Ruschița marble, and the queen’s study is appointed with columns and a fireplace in a Romanian historicizing style, its furniture bearing personal emblems associated with the queen. The heir’s study follows a restrained German neo‑Renaissance taste and contains a notable walnut desk carved with three panels showing the castles Peleș, Pelișor and Foișor.

The palace preserves a collection of decorative artworks associated with the Art Nouveau movement, including pieces attributed to makers and designers active in that period. Among the movable holdings are a painted manuscript on parchment presented to the queen in 1906 and several watercolours by her hand. Over the mid-20th century many principal objects were relocated to national and regional museums; the building itself was closed for conservation in 1975 and later reopened as a museum in 1993, while the original decorative ensemble remains the defining feature of the palace interior.