Three days in Sighisoara: a citadel with the washing still hanging out

Two nights inside the walls, one full day out to Targu Mures, and a covered staircase to finish on.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Sighișoara
Places
8 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

The King of Hungary invited German craftsmen east in the 12th century to hold the frontier, and Schassburg is what they built: a hill, a ring of walls, a tower for every guild, and a church at the top reached by a covered wooden staircase. UNESCO listed it because almost none of it was ever pulled down.

The part people underestimate is that it is still lived in. There are cars parked on the cobbles, children coming out of the school on the square, and laundry on lines between 16th century houses. It has a couple of Dracula themed restaurants, because the man whose name became Dracula was born here, but they are confined to about forty metres of one street and easily walked past.

The citadel itself takes an afternoon. Two nights gets you that plus a full day out into the Mures valley, and by the second evening you will be one of maybe thirty visitors left up on the hill, and that is when the place is at its best.

Highlights

  • A walled Saxon citadel that never emptied out, with people still living in it
  • The clock tower, its painted figures and the balcony over the whole valley
  • A covered wooden staircase of 175 steps up to the church and the cemetery on the hill
  • Targu Mures, an hour away, with a Hungarian Art Nouveau palace of culture that nobody outside Romania has heard of
  • The Teleki library, a chancellor's private collection of 200,000 books, thrown open to readers in 1802

Where to stay

Sighisoara, two nights

Sleep inside the walls if you can. There are only a handful of guesthouses up there, several of them in genuinely old buildings, and having the citadel to yourself after the coaches leave is the whole argument for staying two nights rather than stopping for lunch.

The lower town has more rooms and lower prices, and the walk up takes ten minutes. It is a perfectly good fallback in July when the citadel is full.

Day by day

Day 1 in Sighișoara

Inside the walls, and up the clock tower

Arrive, drop your bag and walk the ring. The citadel is a rough oval with the towers spaced around it, each one built and manned by a particular guild, and the names are still on them: the tinsmiths, the bootmakers, the ropemakers, the tailors.

Then go up the clock tower, which is the one thing here that costs money and is worth it. The mechanism drives a set of painted wooden figures that change with the day of the week, there is a local history museum on the way up, and the balcony at the top puts the whole valley in front of you.

Vlad Tepes was probably born in the ochre house down the street from it, in the 1430s, while his father was living in exile here. The building is now a restaurant and the connection is thin, but the room upstairs is genuinely 15th century.

  1. 15:00

    Sighișoara Citadel

    Other

    The walled upper town, founded by Saxon settlers in the 12th century and still inhabited. Walk the full circuit of what survives of the wall first; it takes half an hour and orients everything else.

  2. 16:30

    Clock Tower

    Architecture

    The gate tower, begun in the 1300s and rebuilt after the fires, about 60 m to the balcony. Painted figures on the clock face, a history museum inside, and the best view in town at the top.

  3. 18:00

    Vlad Dracul House

    Historic

    The house where Vlad Tepes was most likely born. It is a restaurant now and leans hard on the Dracula business, but ask and they will let you see the upstairs room.

  4. 19:30

    Dinner on Piata Cetatii

    Eat

    Eat up on the citadel square on the first night. The food is ordinary, the setting is not, and it empties out by nine.

With more time: Walk the walls again after dark. The citadel keeps its street lighting deliberately low and there is almost nobody about, which is the closest you will get to seeing it as it was.

Day 2 in Sighișoara

Targu Mures: Art Nouveau, and a library of 200,000 books

An hour east by minibus is a city almost nobody puts on a Transylvanian itinerary, and it has the most extravagant early 20th century architecture in Romania. Targu Mures was a wealthy Hungarian town when Hungarian Secession architecture was at its peak, and it spent the money on a palace of culture with stained glass, mirrored halls and a concert organ.

Two streets away is a library a Transylvanian chancellor built to hold his own collection and then opened to the public, in 1802, when that was a startling thing to do. The reading room is unchanged.

Do not book a train. The rail line loops the long way round and takes five hours; the road takes just over one.

  1. 10:30

    Culture Palace

    Visit

    Built between 1911 and 1913 in the Hungarian Art Nouveau style, with a hall of mirrors, stained glass telling Szekely folk tales, and a concert hall still in weekly use. The single best building in this part of Romania.

  2. 12:30

    Teleki Library

    Culture

    Samuel Teleki, chancellor of Transylvania, assembled over 200,000 volumes and opened them to the public in 1802. The baroque reading room is still shelved as he left it.

  3. 13:45

    Lunch on Trandafirilor Square

    Eat

    The long central square has terraces down one side and is the obvious place to stop between the two.

  4. 15:15

    Art Nouveau city center

    Visit

    The square and the streets running off it are lined with Hungarian Secession facades, most of them unrestored and none of them signposted. An hour of looking up.

With more time: The 17th century fortress on the north side of the centre is free to walk into and has a Reformed church inside the walls. Twenty minutes, and on the way back to the bus.

Day 3 in Sighișoara

The covered staircase and the church on the hill

Save this for last. A roofed wooden staircase climbs from the top of the citadel to the church and the cemetery above it, built covered so that schoolchildren could get up there in winter, and it is the single most photographed thing in Sighisoara for good reason.

The church at the top is late Gothic, cold, and full of frescoes that were whitewashed by the Lutherans and uncovered again in the 20th century. There is a crypt underneath.

The cemetery around it is where the Saxons are buried, and the German names run out around 1990, when almost the entire community left for Germany. It is the quietest history lesson in Transylvania.

  1. 10:00

    Covered Staircase

    Other

    175 steps under a wooden roof, climbing from the citadel to the church on the hill. Two minutes if you hurry, which you should not.

  2. 10:40

    The Hill Church

    Religious

    Late Gothic, Lutheran, with recovered wall paintings and a crypt below. The cemetery on the slope outside is worth as long again as the church.

With more time: If you have the whole day, Medias is 35 minutes west on the Sibiu line, with a walled precinct, a leaning church tower and almost no visitors.

Before you go

Getting in

Six direct trains a day run from Bucharest, taking about 6 hours, and three from Sibiu in around 3 with a change at Medias or Copsa Mica. The overnight from Budapest leaves at 19:00 and arrives just after seven in the morning, which is a very good way to arrive here.

The nearest airports are Targu Mures, Sibiu and Cluj. If you fly into any of them without a car, expect to spend a night in that city first, because the last connections leave early.

Getting around

On foot, entirely. The citadel is a few hundred metres across and the lower town below it is a ten minute walk. There is nowhere in Sighisoara you would take a taxi to.

The cobbles inside the walls are large, uneven and treacherous in the wet, and the ramp up from the lower town is steep. Bring shoes, not sandals, and be prepared to carry a suitcase up the hill if you sleep inside the citadel.

When to go

May, June and September. The medieval festival in July fills the citadel completely and is either the reason to come or the reason to avoid that week, depending on your tolerance for men in chainmail.

Day trippers arrive from about eleven and are gone by four, so early mornings and evenings inside the walls are almost private. Staying inside the citadel rather than in the lower town is what buys you that.

Most people give Sighisoara ninety minutes between Brasov and Cluj, photograph the clock tower and leave. That is enough to see it and not nearly enough to understand why it matters: this is a fortified Saxon town that was never abandoned, never rebuilt and never turned into a museum, and there are almost none of those left.

Two nights, sleeping within the walls, and take the covered staircase on your last 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.

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Common questions

Is Sighisoara worth more than a day trip?
It depends what you want from it. The sights take an afternoon and any coach tour will tell you that. What two nights buys is the citadel between five in the evening and ten in the morning, when the day trippers have gone and about seven hundred residents have it back. That is the actual attraction.
Was Dracula really born here?
Vlad Tepes, the historical figure behind the name, very probably was, in the 1430s, while his father was living in the town. Bram Stoker's character was invented in London by a man who never visited Romania. The house is real; the vampire is not.
Can I do this without a car?
Yes. Sighisoara is on the main Bucharest to Budapest railway and minibuses run to Targu Mures and Medias through the day. A car only becomes useful for the fortified church villages such as Biertan and Viscri, which public transport reaches badly if at all.
Where should I stay, inside the citadel or below it?
Inside, if there is a room. The guesthouses up there are small and old and there are not many of them, but sleeping within the walls is the difference between visiting Sighisoara and staying in it. The lower town is ten minutes downhill and a good deal cheaper.