A short walk from Peleș
Status: a short walk from Peleș.
A few minutes' walk uphill from Peleș stands its smaller, gentler sister: Pelișor, meaning "little Peleș." Built between 1899 and 1903 for the future King Ferdinand and his wife, Queen Marie, it was the work of the same architect, Karel Liman — but where Peleș is grand and Germanic, Pelișor is intimate and modern, and it belongs above all to Marie. A British princess and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, she shaped its interiors to her own bold Art Nouveau taste, and the result feels less like a palace than a deeply personal home.
The Golden Room and Queen Marie's style
The room not to miss is the Golden Room (Camera de Aur), Queen Marie's own creation: walls of carved oak gilded and worked with the thistle, the emblem she chose as her signature. Elsewhere you will find flowing Art Nouveau lines, Viennese furniture, and delicate glass by Tiffany and Lalique — a world away from the armour and dark walnut next door. Allow around 45 minutes to see it properly; it is smaller than Peleș, but every room rewards a slow look.
The private heart of the royal family
It was here, too, that Queen Marie spent her final years, and here that she died in 1938. She loved the place so completely that her heart — after a long journey across Romania's shifting twentieth-century borders — now rests at Pelișor, in the very room where she died: a quietly moving close to the story of a British princess who made herself wholly Romanian.
How to combine Pelișor with Peleș
Pelișor is an easy addition to a Peleș visit, on the same royal estate and reached by a short stroll through the grounds. It does require its own ticket, which you can buy online at the same time as your Peleș booking or in a combination ticket. If Peleș shows you the splendour of Romania's first king, Pelișor shows you the private heart of the family who came after — well worth the few extra minutes' walk.