[10] Transylvania was discovered on 27 August 1940, by Hungarian astronomer Gyula Strommer at the Konkoly Observatory near Budapest, Hungary.

It became a lost minor planet until Spring 1981, when astronomer Leif Kahl Kristensen at the University of Aarhus rediscovered it based on contemporary observations at Palomar Observatory.

With these two rediscoveries in 1981, only nine numbered minor planets remained unobserved since their discoveries: 330 Adalberta, 473 Nolli, 719 Albert, 724 Hapag, 843 Nicolaia, 878 Mildred, 1009 Sirene, 1026 Ingrid, and 1179 Mally.

[9] In September 2004, a rotational lightcurve of Transylvania was obtained from photometric observations by French amateur astronomer Laurent Bernasconi.

[4][5][6][7] The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link derives an albedo of 0.1047 and a diameter of 13.60 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 12.4.