Tărlung Reservoir

The Tărlung Reservoir, also known as the Săcele Dam, is an artificial lake on the Tărlung River, within the municipality of Săcele, Brașov County, in a mountain valley at the foot of the Ciucaș and Întorsura Mountains. The dam — an earth-fill embankment with a clay core, about 45 m high — was built between 1971 and 1975 to supply drinking water to the towns of Brașov and Săcele. After the heightening completed in 2020, its capacity rose to about 28 million cubic metres, and its surface of roughly 145 hectares makes it the largest embanked reservoir in Romania, today supplying over 600,000 inhabitants. Beyond its strategic role, the lake hides a landscape of old, meaningful names. The valley is furrowed by streams descending from the Ciucaș, one of which bears the name "Dracul" (the Devil) — a typically Romanian toponym given to wild, rushing, untameable places "left to the Evil One". (Nothing to do with Vlad Dracul: it is simply the old word for devil.) The tradition runs through the whole massif, where dramatic conglomerate formations carry names such as the "Devil's Hand" (Mâna Dracului). The area also has a rich human history: Săcele and its neighbouring villages — Tărlungeni, Purcăreni, Zizin — were part of the famous "Seven Villages", with a mixed population, including the Csángó (Ceangăi) community of Săcele, which left a distinctive layer of Hungarian place-names overlaid on the Romanian ones. As a drinking-water source, the lake is a protected area with restricted access and activities — fishing and swimming are not allowed. It can be admired from a distance, from the area of the DN1A Săcele–Cheia road, as an unexpectedly vast sheet of water held between forested slopes.