It’s not often that Tripadvisor suggests you stay at a hotel owned by His Majesty the King of Australia. But that’s what happens if you’re searching for accommodation in one of the more remote parts of Transylvania, a province of Romania.

The King’s Retreat, where we recently stayed, was previously a dilapidated 150-year-old farmhouse with some outhouses which the then-Prince Charles bought in 2008 for a rumoured A$24,000. The buildings have been beautifully restored to provide seven rooms available when HM isn’t there. These include the Prince Charles Room, which the King uses and which we secured. Like all the rooms, the decoration is shabby-chic rustic: don’t expect royal grandeur.

In a magical setting among meadows and deep forest, the silence is disturbed only by the occasional howling of distant wolves.  There’s no wi-fi or television but there are plenty of crosses to ward off vampires, and the retreat offers sleigh rides in the snow for bear-watching. The isolation from the 21st century is further highlighted by the guest-house being reachable only by 10 kilometres of unmade, potholed road. Set menu meals are taken in the company of other guests.  But potential visitors might note that the kitchen staff speak only Hungarian. Non-Hungarian-speaking visitors might need to brush up on their sign-language skills.  A thought occurred here: the King would clearly like Andrew Mountbatten Windsor to disappear to a very remote place. Mightn’t a neat solution be his becoming the manager of his brother’s Transylvanian retreat?

The King’s guest-house offers the surprising bonus of providing not the slightest hint of his woke obsessions. We’d anticipated anxious prior questions about ‘dietary preferences’. But meals don’t offer options reflecting HM’s intermittent veganism or his enthusiasm for embracing Islam. Instead, we were greeted with local brandy and the traditional Hungarian Christian welcome ‘Isten hozta’ (‘God brought you’) and pork products featured prominently at dinner and breakfast. Halal alternatives weren’t offered.  The website moreover shamefully forgets to stress how welcome LGBTQ+ guests are.

Given King Charles’ obsessive support for the net zero agenda, we were also expecting the retreat to be a temple to what he’s often described as the ‘climate emergency’.  But, even more surprisingly, this area of his concerns also appears to be entirely absent from the guest-house’s management. Heating relies on an open fire in the dining room and electricity comes from Romania’s grid, significantly reliant on coal and gas. There are no solar panels, wind turbines, heat pumps or electric car charging points. There aren’t even those signs you often get in hotel bathrooms underlining the owner’s commitment to saving the planet and asking that you, the guest, show that you also care about climate change by not insisting on a fresh towel every day. Instead, the inspiration behind his Transylvanian operation appears to be from a different, conservative Charles we haven’t seen so much of recently, the one with an endearing love for traditional architecture and unspoilt countryside.

The King’s Retreat is his second real estate investment in Transylvania, the first being another equally charming village house in the neighbouring historically German-speaking Saxon land, where restoration skills are taught. Profits from the two operations are invested in local heritage, employment and educational projects. Romanians deeply appreciate the King’s interest and commitment, which has done much for the local economies and to encourage tourism.

Charles is said to have visited Transylvania over twenty times and, remarkably, it was his first international destination after he became King. What drives his strong interest?  Aside from obviously being charmed by the region and its opportunities for architectural restoration, he has strong family links.  His great-grandmother Mary of Teck, Queen of King George V, was descended from the Transylvanian Hungarian nobility and Vlad the Impaler – Dracula – was an ancestor. As Charles has noted, ‘I am descended from Vlad the Impaler, so I do have a bit of a stake in the country’ (geddit?). He is also said to have become fascinated by English writer Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Between the Woods and the Water, his elegiac description of his 1930s walk across Hungary and Transylvania and the warm hospitality of the aristocratic families he stayed with along the way, who were soon after to face the convulsions of war and communism.

Away from the rough roads leading to The King’s Retreat, a visit to Romania is a reminder that the post-1989 rebirth of Europe’s former Soviet satellites is one of the world’s few unequivocally good news stories. In Romania’s case, the Ceaușescu regime of food queues and the Securitate has been replaced by a booming First World consumer economy, security in Nato, huge flows of EU funds and now also Grade One Membership, admission to its Schengen passport-free area. New infrastructure is impressive:  one 400-kilometre stretch of new motorway we used didn’t exist when we last visited in 2016. Romania is also among the most generous former Soviet Bloc states when it comes to restitution rights for those dispossessed by the communists.

On Transylvania’s back roads you’ll still drive through impoverished villages and dodge horse-drawn carts. But then you encounter its splendid historically Hungarian and German cities – Timisoara, Sibiu, Sighisoara and Brasov – all now magnificently restored. There’s also its charming Saxon country, full of unspoilt ancient villages guarded by impressive fortified Lutheran churches.

Sibiu, the Saxon Hermannstadt and former capital of Transylvania, is a particular delight, featuring one of Europe’s finest squares and the Brukenthal Museum, the most impressive art collection between Budapest and Athens. The splendid 1785 baroque palace of Baron Samuel Brukenthal, one-time Austrian governor, houses the collection of treasures he amassed, which includes many works by Flemish and Italian masters. The fact that this marvellous place survived the Nazis, the Red Army and Ceaușescu’s mafia regime is miraculous.

A very different attraction also worth a visit is the Museum of the Communist Consumer in Timisoara, which offers a grimly fascinating display of the pitiful food options in pre-1989 Romania. The jars of preserved food with typewritten labels are particularly depressing.

The better-known bits of Europe are ever more heaving with tourism. In Transylvania, for the moment, you’ll have its charms almost to yourself.  But take a hint from our King and don’t leave it too long.