Heroes' Cross on Caraiman

The Heroes' Cross stands on the Caraiman massif in the Bucegi Mountains at about 2,291 m, close to Vârful Caraiman (2,384 m) and above the town of Bușteni, inside Bucegi Natural Park. Its official name is „Crucea comemorativă a eroilor români din Primul Război Mondial”, and it is also called Crucea Eroilor Neamului or the Heroes' Monument on Caraiman. It was raised in memory of the Romanian soldiers killed in the First World War fighting in the Prahova Valley. Work was completed in 1928. It was built by the Romanian Railways (CFR) through its Bridge Directorate: engineer Victor Emanuel Bruckner coordinated the work and the structural design was drawn up by Teofil Revici and Alfred Pilder. Sources disagree on who initiated the monument and who its architect was. The structure is made of steel sections on a stone-clad concrete base, and its official total height is 39.30 m. The cross was first lit by a generator housed in the base, which powered 120 bulbs of 500 W; today it has 300 bulbs of 500 W. The monument was repaired in 1965-1967. In 2013 Guinness World Records certified it as the tallest cross in the world standing on a mountain summit. In 2016 a government decision moved it from the public property of Bușteni to that of the state, under the Ministry of National Defence, which restored it in 2017-2021. It is a listed historic monument, LMI code PH-IV-m-A-16887. From Bușteni, take the Bușteni-Babele cable car and then walk along the Caraiman ridge for about an hour and a half on the trail marked with a red cross. On foot from Bușteni, the route goes up Valea Jepilor Mici (blue cross) to Cabana Caraiman, from where a path marked with a red dot leads to the cross.