For many people Sibiu is the most beautiful city in Romania, and it's hard to argue with them. The former capital of Saxon Transylvania, this German 'Hermannstadt' has one of the best-restored historic centres in Eastern Europe: two monumental squares linked together, colourful houses with those distinctive roof dormers that look like half-closed eyes —'the eyes of Sibiu', which give the city the feeling of always watching you—, towers, walls and an iron bridge steeped in legend.
Founded by Saxon settlers in the 12th century, Sibiu was the richest and most powerful of the seven German cities of Transylvania, home to guilds, bankers and printing presses, and even capital of the Grand Principality of Transylvania. That golden age left a dazzling heritage, crowned by the Brukenthal Museum, one of the oldest art galleries in Europe. Lovingly restored, Sibiu was European Capital of Culture in 2007, a turning point that put it on the tourist map.
This guide covers the essentials of Sibiu with a practical, friendly approach: its two squares, the Bridge of Lies, the Council Tower, the Lutheran cathedral, the picturesque lower town and the great Brukenthal Museum, plus the unmissable ASTRA open-air museum. And how to use it as a base for one of the most spectacular routes in the country, the Transfăgărășan road. Sibiu is Saxon Transylvania at its most elegant, and a must-stop on any trip through Romania.
Sibiu was founded in the 12th century (documented around 1191 as Hermannstadt) by Saxon settlers, Germans brought in by the kings of Hungary to populate and defend the southern frontier of Transylvania. Located at a crossroads of trade routes, it prospered quickly and became the most important of the Saxon 'seven cities' that gave the region its German name, Siebenbürgen. Its guilds —there were as many as nineteen— built a formidable system of walls and towers, and the city grew rich on trade, banking and crafts. It was a major cultural centre: the first book in Romania was printed here, and one of the country's first pharmacies and libraries operated here. Between the 18th and 19th centuries, Sibiu was the seat of the governor and capital of the Grand Principality of Transylvania under the Habsburgs. Baron Samuel von Brukenthal, a governor of Saxon origin, assembled an extraordinary art collection that he left to the city: the Brukenthal Museum, open to the public since 1817, one of the oldest in Europe. In 1918, along with the rest of Transylvania, Sibiu became part of Romania. During communism most of the Saxons emigrated to Germany. With its old town restored, Sibiu was European Capital of Culture in 2007 and today is one of the most prosperous and visited cities in the country; its Saxon mayor, Klaus Iohannis, went on to become president of Romania. 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. There are not many in Sibiu, but the ones there are worth it. 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. Tap the cards below and have a look.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Sibiu was born, like Brașov and the other great towns of Transylvania, out of the Saxon colonisation. In the twelfth century, the kings of Hungary called in German colonists — the 'Saxons' — to populate and defend the southern frontier of their kingdom, in exchange for broad rights of self-government. One of those settlements, recorded around 1191 under the Latin name of Cibinium and the German one of Hermannstadt (supposedly after a founder called Hermann), was destined to become the most important town in Saxon Transylvania.
Its site, at a crossing of trade routes between central Europe and the Balkans, at the foot of the Făgăraș mountains, encouraged rapid growth. Sibiu organised itself into guilds of craftsmen and merchants — it came to have nineteen — that dominated economic and political life, and that raised a formidable system of walls, towers and bastions to protect themselves from Tatar and Ottoman raids. Each guild defended a stretch of the wall and a tower.
Through the Middle Ages, Sibiu became the head of the 'Saxon university' (Universitas Saxonum), the political body that grouped and represented the Saxons of Transylvania. It was the richest and most populous of the 'seven towns' (Siebenbürgen) that gave the region its name, and its influence stretched across the whole of southern Transylvania. It is no accident that much of the monumental heritage we admire today — the squares, the churches, the guild towers — has its root in those centuries of guild power and commercial prosperity.
Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, Sibiu lived its period of greatest splendour. The trade, banking and craftwork of its guilds made it prosperous, and the town filled with fine stone houses, churches and the two great squares we admire today. The imposing Gothic church (today the Lutheran cathedral), with its tower of almost 74 metres, went up between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as a symbol of the community's power.
Sibiu was also a cultural centre of the first order. With the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, the Saxons embraced Lutheranism, and the town threw itself into education and printing: the first known book in Romania was printed here and one of the first documented pharmacies in central and eastern Europe operated here (today the Pharmacy Museum). It was also a centre of medicine, the arts and the sciences in the Transylvania of the time.
Strategically, Sibiu sat at the centre of the power struggles of Transylvania, a principality that, after Hungary fell to the Ottomans in 1526, became an autonomous state and a vassal of the sultan, fought over between Ottomans and Habsburgs. The town walls, constantly reinforced, held out against sieges and attacks. The coexistence of the German Saxons, the Hungarians and the Romanian population — the last of these with fewer rights and often living in the outer districts — shaped the life of the town for centuries.
After Transylvania was incorporated into the Habsburg Empire at the start of the eighteenth century, Sibiu reached a new peak of political importance. For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was the seat of the governor and the capital of the Grand Principality of Transylvania, the administrative centre from which Vienna governed the region.
The figure who best embodies this period is baron Samuel von Brukenthal (1721-1803), a Saxon from Sibiu who rose to be governor of Transylvania and a trusted man of the empress Maria Theresa in Vienna. Brukenthal put together an extraordinary collection of European art, books and objects, which he installed in his baroque palace on the Large Square. In his will he left it to the community, and in 1817 it opened to the public as a museum: the Brukenthal Museum, one of the oldest in Europe, older even than many of the continent's national museums.
The nineteenth century was also that of the national awakening. The large Romanian population of Transylvania, a majority but for centuries without full political rights, began to organise; ASTRA, the Transylvanian Association for Romanian Literature and the Culture of the Romanian People, founded in 1861, had its seat in Sibiu and drove Romanian culture and national consciousness. The 1848 revolution and the tensions between Saxons, Hungarians and Romanians announced the great changes the following century would bring.
In 1918, with the defeat of Austria-Hungary in the First World War and the Great Assembly of Alba Iulia, Transylvania joined the Kingdom of Romania, and Sibiu became part of the Romanian state. The town, until then with a Saxon majority, began a slow demographic transformation that would speed up over the twentieth century.
The Second World War and the communist regime that followed hit the Saxon community hard. Many Saxons were deported to the Soviet Union for forced labour after 1945, others lost their property to nationalisation, and over the communist decades — and above all after the fall of the regime in 1989 — the vast majority emigrated to Germany, drawn by German citizenship and fleeing the dictatorship. In a few decades, a community of centuries almost disappeared: the Saxon villages and fortified churches around the town were left with their architecture intact but emptied of their original inhabitants.
In spite of everything, Sibiu kept and magnificently restored its historic centre. The great turning point came in 2007, when the town was European Capital of Culture (together with Luxembourg), the same year Romania joined the European Union. That event drove a full-scale restoration and put Sibiu on the international tourist map. In 2019 it was also European Region of Gastronomy.
One symbolic detail of this story: Klaus Iohannis, of the Saxon minority, was mayor of Sibiu for years, is credited with much of its revival, and in 2014 was elected president of Romania, an office he held for a decade. Today Sibiu is one of the most prosperous, cultured and visited towns in the country, and for many the most beautiful: the best showcase of the Saxon heritage of Transylvania.
