Brașov is fairytale Transylvania turned into a city. At the foot of Mount Tâmpa, topped by a Hollywood-style sign, lies one of the prettiest old towns in Eastern Europe: a large medieval square lined with colourful houses, cobbled lanes, towers, walls and the imposing Black Church, the largest Gothic church between Vienna and Istanbul. Founded by German Saxon settlers in the 13th century, this 'crown city' (Kronstadt) keeps the prosperous, orderly feel of Transylvania's old German towns.
But Brașov is much more than a medieval postcard. It's a lively and surprisingly cosmopolitan city, with a big square for a drink in the sun, one of the narrowest streets in Europe, a historic Romanian district (Schei) on the other side of the walls and a cable car that takes you up in minutes to a viewpoint with the whole city at your feet. And above all, it's the best base for exploring the heart of Transylvania: from here you can head out to the famous Bran Castle, the Râșnov fortress, the castles of Sinaia and the ski slopes of Poiana Brașov.
This guide covers the essentials of Brașov with a practical, friendly eye: what to see in its Gothic and Saxon old town, how to get up Mount Tâmpa, how to get around and use the city as a base for the big day trips, when to go, and where to sleep and eat really well for very little money. Brașov is the ideal starting point to fall in love with Transylvania: medieval, mountainous, affordable and full of charm.
Brașov was founded in the 13th century (around 1211-1235) by the Teutonic Knights and, above all, by the Saxon settlers —Germans brought in by the kings of Hungary to populate and defend the Transylvanian frontier—, who called it Kronstadt, 'crown city'. It was one of the seven Saxon cities (Siebenbürgen) and thrived as a trading power thanks to its strategic position on the routes between Transylvania, Wallachia and the Ottoman Empire, with powerful guilds that built walls, towers and churches. The colossal Gothic Black Church was built between the 14th and 15th centuries. For centuries three communities lived side by side here: the German Saxons inside the walls, the Romanians in the Schei district and the Hungarians (Székely). The First Romanian School operated in Schei, and some of the first books in the Romanian language were printed there in the 16th century by the deacon Coresi. Brașov passed from the Hungarian crown to the Habsburg Empire and, in 1918, along with the rest of Transylvania, became part of Romania. Under communism it was industrialised and grew enormously (it was even renamed Orașul Stalin, 'Stalin City', between 1950 and 1960). In 1987 it saw one of the first major workers' revolts against Ceaușescu. Today it is one of Romania's most visited and best-loved cities. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The mountainous heart of Romania, a land of Saxon citadels, castles and minorities: a thousand years inside Hungary and the Habsburg empire before joining Romania in 1918, and the homeland of the Dracula myth.
Read the history of Transylvania →Some places make no sense on your own; with someone explaining them, they change completely. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 6 activities in Brasov. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Have a look below: tap any of them to see them all.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The Brașov we admire today, with its monumental square and its Black Church, is a child of the Saxon colonisation of Transylvania. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the kings of Hungary, who ruled the region, invited German colonists — the so-called 'Saxons', although they came from various parts of the Holy Roman Empire — to populate and defend the eastern frontier of the kingdom, granting them broad privileges. Alongside them, around 1211, the Teutonic Knights settled briefly in the area.
So around 1235 was born the town the Saxons called Kronstadt, 'the city of the crown' (Brassó in Hungarian, Brașov in Romanian). Its site could not have been better: at the foot of Mount Tâmpa, in a valley sheltered by the Carpathians, and at the crossing of the trade routes linking Transylvania with Wallachia and, beyond it, with the Ottoman Empire and the East. That position soon made it a commercial power.
Brașov organised itself as a free and prosperous town, governed by its guilds of craftsmen and merchants. It was one of the 'seven towns' of the Saxons that gave Transylvania its German name, Siebenbürgen ('seven fortresses'). The guilds raised a formidable belt of walls, towers and bastions — each trade defended a stretch — and, between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the colossal Gothic church that would become its symbol. Those fortifications, constantly reinforced over the centuries, made Brașov one of the best defended strongholds in all of Transylvania.
The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were Brașov's golden age. Sitting at the mouth of the passes towards Wallachia, the town cornered much of the trade between Transylvania and the south, and its merchants grew rich on the goods coming and going from the Ottoman Empire: cloth, spices, weapons and the famous oriental carpets that still hang in the Black Church. The Saxon guilds reached remarkable power and wealth.
Brașov was also a centre of culture. With the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, the Saxons became Lutherans, led by the humanist Johannes Honterus, who founded a school and a printing press here. And in the Romanian district of Schei, outside the walls, another decisive thing was happening: around 1559-1583 the deacon Coresi was printing some of the first books in the Romanian language, a fundamental step for the country's culture. The First Romanian School operated at the church of St Nicholas in Schei.
Because Brașov was a town of three peoples living side by side with tensions and balances: the German Saxons, masters of trade and of the walled interior; the Romanians, mostly Orthodox, in the Schei district; and the Hungarians and Székelys of the region. In 1689, a devastating fire during the occupation by Austrian troops destroyed much of the town and blackened the walls of the great Gothic church, which has been known ever since as the Black Church.
After the Ottoman withdrawal from Hungary, Transylvania — and Brașov with it — passed at the start of the eighteenth century into the hands of the Habsburg monarchy, the Austrian Empire, of which it would be part until 1918 (from 1867, as part of Austria-Hungary). The town was rebuilt after the fire of 1689 with the baroque air it has today and remained an important commercial and craft centre, although its old trading monopoly gradually eroded.
The nineteenth century brought deep changes. The 1848 revolution shook Transylvania, with the different peoples — Saxons, Hungarians and Romanians — set against each other by their national aspirations. The Romanian population of the region, a majority but long without full political rights, was building a national consciousness, and Brașov, with its Schei district and its Romanian cultural tradition, was one of the focal points of that awakening. In 1850 the musician Ciprian Porumbescu and other Romanian intellectuals were enlivening the cultural life of the town.
The First World War brought matters to a head. With the defeat of Austria-Hungary, the Great National Assembly gathered at Alba Iulia on 1 December 1918 proclaimed the union of Transylvania with the Kingdom of Romania. Brașov, with its Saxon majority and its Hungarian and Romanian communities, became part of a united Romania ('România Mare'). A new stage was beginning in which the town, until then German at its core, would gradually integrate into the Romanian state.
The twentieth century turned Brașov from a Saxon merchant town into a major industrial centre. Factories were set up between the wars (aviation, machinery), and above all after the Second World War the communist regime made Brașov one of Romania's largest industrial hubs, with enormous truck and tractor plants. The population multiplied with the arrival of workers from all over the country, and the city grew with large districts of housing blocks. Between 1950 and 1960, at the height of Stalinism, Brașov was humiliatingly renamed Orașul Stalin ('Stalin city').
That working-class world played the lead in a key episode of resistance to the regime. On 15 November 1987, thousands of workers from the truck factory rose up against wage cuts and the hardships of the last years of the Ceaușescu dictatorship, in one of the largest workers' revolts in communist Romania. The protest, which went as far as storming the Party headquarters, was put down and its leaders deported, but it is remembered as a foretaste of the 1989 Revolution, which two years later would end the regime.
Another deep change was the disappearance of the Saxon community. After centuries of presence, most of the Saxons of Brașov and of the whole of Transylvania emigrated to Germany during communism and, above all, after 1990, leaving towns and villages that still keep their architecture but no longer their German population.
Today, Brașov has turned its historic centre into one of Romania's great tourist destinations. Restored and full of life, it combines its medieval Saxon heritage, its atmosphere of terraces and culture, its closeness to the mountains and to the castles of Transylvania, and an economy that now looks to services and technology. The 'city of the crown' is living a new splendour, this time as the tourist capital of the heart of Transylvania.
