What is this strange formation near Râmnicu Vâlcea? So I was browsing Google Earth the other day and I found this strange formation near Râmnicu Vâlcea, at about 45°07'N 24°16'E




It's an almost circular region, about 40 km in diameter which to my eyes looks like a multi ringed impact crater, but then again it's near a mountain chain so it could be just some random feature created by the converging tectonic plates. But what could cause the hills to be arranged in this strange manner?

Elevation profiles

North-South:
 

East-West
My guess is streams fed by mountains that have been tectonically compressed and is undergoing some rotation. Near Italy are 3 tectonic boundary. Convergent, transform, and divergent. Due to the plate motion of the Eurasian plate, to the African plate, and the Arabian plate, it is causing compression and what I can describe as some rotation the land. It appears to be an involved relationship. I used Google Earth to create this map:



I hope I helped or gave you a direction to look. As you can see by the arrows, there are areas of convergence that are oblique and related in a way, that his geologic feature is not at all impossible.

Other sources


Google search
Earthquakes in Italy