Emerald Lake and Racoș Extinct Volcano

The Emerald Lake (Brazi Lake) is an artificial lake formed inside a former basalt quarry, near the village of Racoș, Brașov County, part of the Racoș Geological Complex — a nature reserve of about 95 hectares, in the Perșani Mountains. The quarry, once worked for basalt, gradually filled with water from rainfall, snowmelt and bottom springs, creating a lake about 20 m deep, whose emerald-green colour shifts with the light and the season. A short distance away lies the Racoș Extinct Volcano, an effusive-type volcanic cone with a crater up to about 100 m high and nearly 400 m in diameter. It is considered the most recently active volcano in Romania, its first eruptions dating back about 1.3–1.4 million years. Its walls — in shades of red, yellow, grey and black, made of scoria, ash and solidified lava — create a lunar, almost Martian landscape. From the resulting porous rock — pumice — local people built their houses, and even the village castle. The complex also features basalt columns, formed by the slow cooling of lava, 12–15 m high with regular hexagonal sections — a phenomenon comparable to the Detunata formations in the Apuseni Mountains or to those in Iceland, Scotland and Ireland. The area thus brings together, within a small perimeter, a lake in a basalt quarry, an extinct volcano and basalt columns — a concentration of geological phenomena rare in Romania. Nearby, in the centre of the village, stands the Sükösd-Bethlen Castle, a 17th-century fortified manor.