A Fortified Church and a Medieval City Centre
Where are we Going Today?
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| Romania |
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| Sibiu (county) |
The fine weather that had been with us since we arrived in Romania deserted us, the hitherto clear skies became increasingly overcast, the temperature dropped from pushing 30° to barely 20 and we were blessed with occasional rain showers. It was a bit too much like home.
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| Driving from Sibiu to Sighișoara in central Romania, we continued our journey through Transylvania |
Sibiu to Biertan
North of Sibiu we found ourselves in a largely flat, green countryside. The road was not wide, but more than adequate for the quantity of traffic.
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| North of Sibiu |
The few villages we encountered were linear and long. Almost all the houses faced the main road – and most buildings were in better repair than the one front left of my photograph. Storks' nests are a feature of every village.
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| Long, linear village north of Sibiu |
Further north, among a
few low hills, the weather became more overcast.
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| Approaching Biertan |
Biertan
Seven villages in Sibiu
and the surrounding counties make up the Transylvanian Villages with Fortified
Churches UNESCO world Heritage Site. Biertan is one such village, and it is
dominated by its huge church which sits on a low hill right in the centre. All seven churches were built by Transylvanian
Saxons.
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| Fortified Church, Biertan |
Transylvanian Saxons
Transylvanian Saxons are (or rather were) Germanic people, though not necessarily Saxons, who migrated
to Transylvania at the invitation of King Géza II of Hungary (ruled 1141–1162).
Further waves of migrants arrived in the following centuries. Their role was to
defend Hungary’s southern and eastern borders, against marauders from Central Asia.
Some marauders, like the Mongols and Tartars, are well known, while the fame of others,
like the Cumans and Pechenegs did not spread to western Europe. The Hungarians
also hoped the Saxons would introduce some Central European culture to a
backward and rural province.
The Saxons prospered as a merchant and artisan middle class between the Hungarians who owned the land
and the Romanians who worked on it. Romanian speakers were in the majority, but
there was no Romania until the mid-19th century and Transylvania was part
of Hungary until 1919.
Biertan Church
We climbed a covered walkway up to the church.
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| Walkway up to the church, Biertan |
UNESCO's seven fortified churches were built at various times, but they were all fortified in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.
Biertan church was built between 1486 and 1524 in late Gothic style over an
earlier Romanesque church.
By this time marauding bands had given way to the Ottoman Empire. They were a much more serious threat and Transylvania became an
autonomous vassal state of the Empire from 1541 to 1699.
The church interior is largely plain, maybe because it is disused, or perhaps because the Saxons changed from Catholicism to being
Lutheran in the 16th century.
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| Pulpit, Biertan Church |
The ceiling, though, is quite elaborate…
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| Ceiling, Biertan Church |
…and the carved altarpiece, dating from about the time the church was built, is one of the finest in the region.
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| Carved altarpiece, Biertan Church |
Late Gothic/Early Renaissance in style, the detail of the carving, the gilding and rich colours (now gone) displayed the wealth and sophistication
of the Transylvanian Saxons.
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| Close-up of central panel, Biertan Church altarpiece |
We popped into the vestry, which has what looks like an old but efficient heater…
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| Vestry, Biertan Church |
…and a wonderfully convoluted lock on the door, so this was probably where they kept their communion silver.
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| Lock on the vestry door, Biertan Church |
Outside the church building, but within the
fortification, we strolled round to check that the bastions were still fulfilling their purpose…
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| Bastion, Biertan fortified church |
…and look across the village they were protecting to the hills over which the marauders might have approached.
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| Biertan and the hills behind |
In peacetime the priest transformed the Eastern bastion into a ‘Prison for Unhappy couples.’
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| 'Prison' for quarreling couples, Biertan Church |
The couple were locked into the room with a single bed, table, chair, plate and spoon. They had to share until they learned to get
along with each other.
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| Inside the prison for quarreling couples, Biertan |
How often and in what periods of history this unique form of marriage guidance counselling was carried out, they do not relate, nor do
they divulge the success rate.
Nearby is the grave of Lukas Unglerus (or Lucas Ungleich), who became bishop of the Transylvanian Saxon Lutheran Church in 1572. The religious
Reformation that swept across northern Europe in the 16th century had little
effect on the Catholic Hungarians or the Eastern Orthodox Romanians, but the
Tranyslvanian Saxons were more receptive. That they maintained their unity in
becoming Lutheran was largely due to Bishop Unglerus. He died in Biertan in
1600, which remained the seat of the Bishopric for another 300 years.
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| Bishop Lukas Unglerus - this looks like it was once on the top of his grave |
Outside the Church
At its peak Biertan was home to some 5,000 people, but the growth in the 19th century of Sibiu (Hermannstadt) to the south and Sighişoara
(Schäßburg) to the north led to Biertan's declined in importance and population.
Then the Transylvanian Saxons left and today’s 1,600 inhabitants are 74%
Romanian, 18% Roma, 5%y Transylvanian Saxons and 4% Hungarians.
Although the Germans are largely gone, the village still looks Germanic.
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| Biertan with a largely Germanic look |
And the storks are still here, one nest built on a pole above a maze of wiring almost up to Indian standards. On the house behind, the builder has selected another stick…
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| Stork's nest, Biertan |
…which he will soon add to the nest.
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| Just the right stick, I think |
We left Bierton and continued towards Sighişoara. Biertan wants to be a tourist attraction, but I saw no other foreigners in town. There were plenty of stalls where locals were selling homemade
honey, backscratchers and anything else they might palm off on tourists. It
was, though, refreshingly uncommercial,
the goods for sale were genuinely locally made and instead of the rapacious ‘fleece
the tourists’ vibe of a major tourist attraction, we received a smiling
welcome. It will not last, now is the sweet spot for visiting Biertan.
Sighişoara
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| Sighişoara |
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| Mureş County |
In the 14th century Sighișoara became a royal centre and was recognised as a ‘Civitas’ (an urban settlement)
in 1367. Transylvanian Saxon artisans and craftsmen built the fortifications
and dominated the economy. In the 16th and 17th centuries they had as many as
15 craft guilds regulating and promoting their activities. The Historic Centre
of Sighișoara, recognised as a UNESCO world Heritage Site in 1999, sits within
their fortress, one of the oldest continuously occupied fortresses in Europe. It feels
very much a village within the modern town.
Lunch in the Square
The main gate is now a clock tower…
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| The Clock Tower, Sighişoara |
… and as the day’s uncertain weather was going through a benign patch (it did not last – see the photo above) we lunched outside one
of the restaurants in the square.
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| The opposite corner of the square, Sighişoara |
Lynne went for a local speciality – as did many around us – Ciorbă se Fasole in Pită, or as the English
translation rather prosaically puts it Bean Soup in Bread. Romanians and their
Moldovan cousins draw a distinction between supa and ciorbă (often translated as sour soup). For more information see the end of the Bucharest post.
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| Bean soup in Bread, Sighişoara |
Removing the top from the bread reveals the bean soup. Finding beans that first arrived from the Americas in the 16th century in a traditional dish might seem surprising, but Romanians having made polenta from millet for millennia, changed to maize almost as soon as it was off the boat. And it is not just Romanians, Southern Europe embraced the tomato, Northern Europe grasped hungrily at the potato and India and South East Asia reached for the chilli as though we had been waiting for these things all or lives.
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| Bean soup in bread, Sighişoara |
The problem with the dish is that once you have enjoyed scraping the soup-sodden bread from the inside, there is nothing to do with the rest. As
it was obviously the restaurant’s best-selling lunch, I hope they had a
strategy for using the leftovers.
I chose a simpler ciorbă.
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| A simpler ciorbǎ, Sighişoara |
Exploring Sighișoara
Our walk was interrupted by rain, but were we daunted? Yes, a bit.
Not all the inhabitants were Transylvanian Saxons. Vlad II, Prince of Wallachia, also know as Vlad Dracul (Vlad the Dragon) took
refuge here 1431-5 and was hosted by the mayor while the Turks were bust invading
Wallachia. His wife was pregnant when they arrived and soon gave birth to a
son, called Vlad like his father. In time he would become Vlad III Țepeș (the
Impaler) aka Vlad Dracula. He was the model for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but
although he was undoubtedly a blood-thirsty sadist, there is no evidence he was
blood-thirsty in Stoker’s literal sense.
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| Dracula's birthplace, Sighişoara |
Dracula was born here…. possibly. There is little evidence this was the mayor’s house at the time but it is the
oldest stone house in Sighișoara and it was here
when Vlad III was born, so….
But he was, definitely born in Sighișoara, and they have a bust of him. He was not
all bad – at least that is the Romanian view. A couple of hours elapsed between
these last two pictures, in which time we checked into our hotel, changed our
clothes and the rain stopped.
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| Vlad the Impaler, Sighișoara |
The bust sits on a terrace from where we could look over the rest of Sighișoara….
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| The rest of Sighișoara |
… the most notable building being the Church of the Holy Trinity. It is a Romanian Orthodox church built in the 1930s in neo-Byzantine
style. It is often referred to as a Cathedral, but it is (I read) the seat of
an archpriest (never come across one of those before) not a bishop, so it is
only a church.
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| The Church of the Holy Trinity, Sighișoara |
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| The Tinsmith's Tower, Sighișoara |
…and this, the most picturesque of all, is the Shoemaker's Tower. Note the sunshine, this was taken next morning when the weather had resumed normal summer services.
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| The Shoemaker;s Tower, Sighișoara |
Having had good look round we walked up the street to out hotel (another next-day photo)…
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| Up the road to our hotel, Sighișoara |
Dining in Sighișoara
…and as the weather was showing signs of improvement, we ate in the garden. We started with a glass of Țuică, Romanian plum brandy,
which is considered an appropriate aperitif in these parts. It is a good clean
spirit, not particularly plummy, but very pleasant when chilled.
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| A glass of țuica, Sighișoara |
It often comes in these little bottles. We felt we ought to pour it into something else, but as there was nothing else, we drank from
the bottles.
The Lynne ate Cârnaț de Mistreț cu Bratkartofflen, wild boar sausages with pan fried potatoes…
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| Wild boar sausages with pan fried potatoes, Sighișoara |
…and I chose Sarmale de porc cu mǎmǎligutǎ și ardei iuțe. Sarmale de porc is cabbage stuffed with pork, mǎmǎligutǎ, the yellow
cuboid behind, is the ubiquitous Romanian polenta, ardei iuțe is a hot
pepper – the chilli poking out at back. I also had a small jug of sour cream and
a pile of vegetable mush – I am not entirely sure what it was, but it was
pleasant enough.
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| Stuffed cabbage and polenta, Sighișoara |
We both felt well satisfied with our choices and our bottle of Castel Huniade Fetească Neagră. Fetească
Neagră is widely planted in Romania and Moldova, and largely ignored by the
rest of the world. Indigene
Wines describe it as having fine tannins, good acidity, medium to full
body…[with]… aromas of dried plums, blackberries, and black blueberries
along with nice black pepper, vanilla and coffee flavours. Neither of us claim
to have found all those flavours, but we enjoyed it.
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| Castel Huniade Fetească Neagră, Sighișoara |
After a good night’s sleep we left Sighișoara and headed south to the fortress of Rupea and Brașov, another of the Seibenburgen – the Seven Citadels of the Transylvanian Saxons.
Romania: An Introduction
Part 1 Bucharest
Part 2 Cozia Monastery and Sibiu
Part 3 Hunedoara and Alba Iulia
Part 4 Biertan and Sighișoara
Part 5 Rupea and Brașov
