Three days in Sibiu: Hermannstadt, where the roofs have eyes
Two nights in the old upper town, one full day given to the open air museum in the forest.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Sibiu
- Places
- 8 across 3 days
German settlers founded Hermannstadt in the 12th century and ran it for the next eight hundred years. Romania's largest German community still lives here, the street signs are bilingual by choice rather than obligation, and the old town looks like a Saxon market town that happens to be 800 km further east than you expect.
The detail everybody remembers is the roofs. Ventilation slits cut into the tiles above the attics are shaped like heavy lidded eyes, and they follow you across both squares. It is the sort of thing that sounds like a gimmick until you are standing under them.
Two nights is the right length. The old town is small enough to walk in an afternoon, but the folk museum out in Dumbrava forest genuinely takes most of a day, and rushing it is the one mistake worth avoiding here.
Highlights
- Two squares joined by an arch, and the council tower you can climb between them
- Roof vents cut like eyelids, all over the upper town
- Hundreds of farmsteads, mills and wooden churches spread around a lake in Dumbrava forest
- The Brukenthal, a Transylvanian governor's private Dutch and Flemish collection, open to the public since the early 1800s
- A lower town of arched workshops directly beneath the upper one, reached by stairs
Where to stay
Sibiu, two nights
Stay in the upper town, between the two squares. Everything below is within a few hundred metres and you will not need a bus except on the second morning.
The lower town, down the stairs to the north, is quieter and cheaper to sleep in, but the climb back up gets old after the second dinner.
Day by day
Day 1 in Sibiu
The Great Square, Huet Square and the tower between them
The upper town is two squares side by side, joined by a passage under the council tower, and almost everything worth seeing in Sibiu itself is on one or the other. Walk the perimeter of both before you go into anything.
The Great Square was the market and the parade ground and is still where the town assembles. Huet Square, through the arch, is older, tighter and dominated by the Gothic church at its centre.
Climb the tower when the light is going. From the top the eyes in the roofs are obvious in a way they are not from the pavement.
- 14:30
The Great Square
ArchitectureThe old market square, big enough to hold a fair and lined with the houses of the Saxon guilds. Sit on the north side in the afternoon, where the sun stays longest.
- 15:45
Huet Square
ArchitectureThe older square, on the site of the first settlement, ringed by former church buildings and the Gothic cathedral. The iron footbridge at its edge is where the town tells its story about people who lied on it.
- 16:45
Turnul Sfatului
ArchitectureThe council tower between the two squares. A tight staircase, a couple of small rooms on the way up, and the best view in Sibiu at the top for a couple of lei.
- 19:00
La Cuptor
EatDinner a minute off the square, cheap and reliably good. Romanian home cooking rather than anything modernised.
With more time: Take the stairs down into the lower town afterwards. It is a different place entirely: arched workshop fronts, no tourists, and a couple of very good bars along Strada Ocnei.
Day 2 in Sibiu
Dumbrava forest, then the governor's paintings
The open air museum is the reason to give Sibiu a second night. It is not a few reconstructed cottages: hundreds of real buildings were dismantled in villages across Romania and rebuilt here, ranged around a lake in the forest, with the mills and presses working.
Bus 13 gets you there in fifteen minutes. Take water, take three hours minimum, and take a map at the gate, because the paths loop and it is genuinely easy to lose an hour going the wrong way round the lake.
Come back in for the afternoon and spend it indoors, in the collection a Habsburg governor of Transylvania assembled in his own house on the main square.
- 09:30
ASTRA Museum of Traditional Folk Civilization
CultureFarmsteads, watermills, oil presses, wooden churches and labourers' cottages from every region of the country, spread through the forest around a lake. Pick a dry day and wear something you can walk five kilometres in.
- 13:30
Lunch back in the old town
EatThe museum cafe is fine but limited. If you can hold out, bus 13 back and eat properly on Piata Mica instead.
- 14:45
Brukenthal National Museum
CultureSamuel Brukenthal was governor of Transylvania in the 1770s and a serious collector: Dutch and Flemish panels, Italian work, and a good Romanian gallery, in the baroque palace he built on the Great Square.
- 17:00
Orthodox Holy Trinity Cathedral
VisitTen minutes west of the square, a Byzantine revival cathedral with a dim gold interior modelled on Hagia Sophia. Free, quiet, and startling after the Gothic austerity of the upper town.
With more time: If the weather has ruined the forest plan, swap it for a day out to Alba Iulia, an hour away, where an entire baroque star fort was restored in the 2010s and is now walkable end to end.
Day 3 in Sibiu
Two small museums on Piata Mica, then out
Both of this morning's rooms are on the smaller square and neither will take you more than half an hour, which is exactly what a departure morning needs.
The ethnography collection is the odder of the two and the better story: things brought back by Sibiu men who travelled far further than anyone expects a Transylvanian merchant to have travelled.
- 09:30
"Franz Binder" World Ethnography Museum
CultureObjects collected across Africa, Asia and the Pacific by 19th century Sibiu travellers, including Franz Binder, who spent years in Sudan. A small, strange and very personal museum.
- 10:45
ASTRA Museum of Transylvanian Civilisation
CultureA single exhibition space that changes: icons on glass, textiles, whatever the ASTRA collection is showing that season. Twenty minutes, and worth checking what is on before you commit.
With more time: With half a day more, Medias is 45 minutes north and has a leaning church tower, a walled precinct and almost no visitors at all.
Before you go
Getting in
The train from Bucharest runs about three times a day and takes 5 to 6 hours, which is slow even by Romanian standards. Buses go hourly and do it in about 5, and hourly to Cluj-Napoca in about 4. For a town this size the bus is genuinely the better option, and the operators are comfortable and cheap.
Sibiu has its own airport with a handful of European routes, which is worth checking before you commit to a long overland leg from Bucharest.
Getting around
Everything in the old town is walkable and most of it is pedestrianised. Sibiu is one of the few Romanian cities where you can tap a contactless card on a city bus and get a ticket printed, which makes the one journey you need, bus 13 out to the folk museum, painless.
The trolleybus and tram network was ripped out in the 2010s, so buses are all there is. Taxis are cheap and metered.
When to go
Late spring and early autumn. Sibiu was European Capital of Culture in 2007 and has been running festivals hard ever since: the international theatre festival in June fills every bed in the city, and the Christmas market in the Great Square is one of the better ones in eastern Europe.
Winter is cold and often beautiful. The folk museum in snow is a completely different place, though check it is open before you go out.
Sibiu is the Transylvanian town that did not have to be restored into something photogenic, because it never stopped being what it was. The squares are still used as squares, the German is still spoken, and the folk museum in the forest is one of the genuinely great museums in this part of Europe.
Two nights, walk everything, and give the forest a whole morning.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is two nights enough for Sibiu?
- For the town itself, yes, comfortably. The reason for the second night is the folk museum out in the forest, which needs a morning of its own. If you want to add Alba Iulia or the fortified church villages, add a third night rather than trying to fold them into these days.
- Sibiu or Brasov?
- Sibiu is the better looking town and the calmer one. Brasov has the mountains and the castles. If you only pick one, pick Brasov for the surroundings and Sibiu for the place itself, and if you have a week in Transylvania you should be doing both anyway.
- How do I get to the ASTRA folk museum?
- Bus 13 from the centre, about fifteen minutes, and you can pay by tapping a contactless card on board. A taxi is cheap enough that two people may as well take one, but the bus is frequent and drops you at the gate.
- Do people really speak German?
- Some do. Sibiu still has Romania's largest German community and the local schools teach in German, so signage is bilingual and hotel staff often switch to it without being asked. English is common too, particularly with anyone under forty.