Sighișoara

From the mid-12th century the kings of Hungary invited German craftsmen and merchants, the Transylvanian Saxons, to settle and defend this frontier, and a Saxon settlement existed here by 1191. A document of 1280 calls the town Castrum Sex, the six-sided camp, after the shape of an earlier fort, and German and Hungarian forms of the name, Schäßburg and Segesvár, follow soon after. By 1337 it was a royal centre, and in 1367 it received urban status. The Romanian name, first recorded in 1435, comes from the Hungarian.

Guilds made the town rich: in the 16th and 17th centuries it had as many as 15 guilds and 20 crafts, and they built and kept the walls and towers of the citadel. Vlad Dracul, the exiled prince of Wallachia and father of Vlad the Impaler, lived here from 1431 to 1435 and minted coins in the town, and his son, according to the historian Radu Florescu, was born here. In 1631 George I Rákóczi was elected Prince of Transylvania in the town, but the 17th and 18th centuries brought occupation, fires and plague.

On 31 July 1849 the Hungarian revolutionary army of Józef Bem was defeated by Russian forces on the nearby plain of Albești, where the poet Sándor Petőfi is believed to have been killed. After the First World War the town passed with Transylvania to Romania. The citadel survived almost intact, and in 1999 it was listed by UNESCO. Between 2001 and 2003 a plan to build a Dracula theme park near the town was dropped after strong opposition from local groups, the media and politicians.

The town's identity is bound up with its citadel, one of the few fortified towns in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe that is still inhabited. Its towers carry the names of the guilds that defended them — tailors, shoemakers, tinsmiths, butchers, ropemakers, tanners, furriers, ironsmiths — and most of its 164 houses that are at least 300 years old are historic monuments. The Saxon heritage is visible in the Church on the Hill, the cemetery beside it and the Joseph Haltrich school.

Vlad the Impaler, the Wallachian prince who inspired the fictional Count Dracula, may have been born here, and his link with Sighișoara draws many visitors; the house where his father lived is marked in the citadel.

The year's high point is the Medieval Festival on the last weekend of July, when theatre, concerts, crafts and costumed parades fill the citadel and around 30,000 visitors come — about as many as the town's own population. The town also holds a blues festival and an interethnic festival of music and dance by Romania's minorities, and the Via Transilvanica long-distance trail passes through it. Sighișoara has long been mixed: Romanians, Hungarians, Roma and the remaining Saxons live side by side.

At the 2021 census Sighișoara had 23,927 inhabitants, down from about 28,100 in 2011. About two-thirds are Romanians, about an eighth Hungarians, with a smaller Roma community and a few Saxons. The town administers seven surrounding villages.

The citadel is both a monument and a neighbourhood: families still live in its houses, and its school, church and cemetery are in daily use, while many of its buildings also hold guesthouses, cafés and shops for visitors. Most residents live in the lower town and in the districts of flats and houses along the valley, where the shops, markets and schools are.

Tourism is an important part of the economy. Life follows the seasons: summer brings coach tours and the festival, while in winter the citadel's streets are almost empty. The population fell between the 2011 and 2021 censuses. Trains and buses from the stations north of the centre connect residents with Bucharest, Sibiu and Cluj-Napoca, and Târgu Mureș, the county seat, is about an hour away by bus.

Sighișoara eats in the Transylvanian way, mixing Romanian, Hungarian and Saxon traditions. Ciorbă, the sour soup soured with lemon, vinegar, sauerkraut juice or borș, starts many meals, and sarmale, cabbage leaves rolled round minced meat and rice, are cooked in Transylvania with smoked pig's trotters or pork skin tucked between the rolls. Mămăligă, cornmeal mush, comes with stews and with telemea cheese and sour cream.

Pork dishes dominate the winter table: tochitură, pan-fried pork with sausages, cheese and fried egg served with mămăligă, and jumări, crisp pork cracklings. Kürtőskalács, the chimney cake of dough wound round a spit and rolled in sugar, is a Székely Hungarian speciality, and papanași are cheese doughnuts served with jam and sour cream.

Fruit brandy is poured as a welcome — țuică from plums and the stronger, double-distilled pălincă of Transylvania — and Transylvania's Târnave wine region is known for its white wines. Restaurants with terraces fill the citadel's square in summer, and simpler places in the lower town serve residents.