The city of Sighisoara, "the most beautiful and well kept fortified town in Transylvania", received in the course of time such appellatives as: Pearl of Tarnava, Pearl of Transylvania and Transylvanian Nurnberg. Sighisoara reveals itself nowadays too like a genuine city museum offering the modern visitor the rare opportunity to do a travel back in time, in the medieval atmosphere of some centuries ago.

The history of the region, where the town of Sighisoara is situated, traces its beginnings some thousands of years before the foundation of the town by the German colonists. These settlements are the: prehistorical settlement on Dealul Turcului - The Turk's Hill (Wietenberg) situated at 3 kilometres North-West of the town, in the middle bronze age (1800 - 1300 b.C.), which gave it the name of Sighisoara - Wietenberg Culture. Situated on the superior plateau of the same hill (Dealul Turcului - Wietenberg), the fortified Dacian settlement dated from the Latene period (the 2nd century b.C. - the 2nd century a.C.) was the most powerful Dacian fortification on the middle course of the Tarnava Mare river. The Dacians, an Indo - European people related to the Thracians, lived 2000 years ago on the territory of the present day Romania, reaching a level of civilization similar to that of the ancient Celts and Germans. Transylvania belonged to Provincia Dacia, and it is extremely rich in Roman civilization vestiges. The Romans built towns, erected military fortifications and achieved a powerful net of strategical roads. So, not far from Sighisoara, on the Podmoale plateau, there are traces of a Roman military fortification (castrum) where a cohort of the 13th Legion GEMINA with the headquarters at Alba Iulia Apulum was stationed.

The most difficult period of the local history begins with the withdrawal of the Roman administration from Dacia. It is the time of migrations, which lasted for about 1000 years, including 10 waves of migratory populations coming from the East. Out of these, only the Magyars succeeded to gradually conquer the entire Transylvania that they integrated into the Magyar kingdom, which lately would be comprised into the Austrian Empire up to 1918, when disintegrated.

In the 12th century a.C., in the South and East of Transylvania, a German population was colonized. Coming from a European space with a superior civilization, this population built the main medieval towns in Transylvania and Hungary, and brought their contribution to the development of local civilization. King Geza the 2nd (1141-1161) brought the German settlers here from the Rhine, Masela and Randra regions. Coming ad retinendram coronam in order to defend the crown, they took into possession fundus regius - the royal land - enjoying special rights and privileges. Other colonists where brought here from the right of the Rhine, from Saxony, a region that gave the Germans from Transylvania the generic name of Saxons.

Out of the town nuclei that appeared at the end of the 13th century, the one situated at the confluence of the Saes and Tarnava Mare Rivers, was to give birth to one of the most specific settlements of the Transylvanian Medieval Age, Sighisoara, the old city of Schassburg.

Sighisoara is included nowadays into the UNESCO patrimony, a medieval European town, whose old buildings are still in a functional state and well kept. Close to Brasov (116 km - E60), Targu-Mures (54 km - E60), Sibiu (90 km - E14), it is also accessible on the main railroad Bucuresti - Brasov - Cluj-Napoca - Oradea.

The chronicler G. Krauss dates the beginnings of the medieval settlement in Sighisoara in the year 1191. But, the place is attested in documents in 1280 under the name of Castrum Sex and then in 1298 under the German word Schespurch.

In the course of the 14th century, the evolution of the settlement was particularly fast. In 1337, Sighisoara becomes a royal centre, and in 1367 it gains the statute of town: Civitas de Segusvar.

The inhabitants of the medieval town were from the beginning artisans, organized from early times in guilds (corporations). Even if the eldest mention of a guild in Sighisoara dates from 1376, from a documentary point of view most of guilds and handicraft branches are specifed after 1400. It is estimated that in the 16th-17th centuries there existed at Sighisoara a number of at least 15 guilds and 20 handicraft branches. The guilds did not have only an economic role, but they also built the fortification system of the town.

The town's epoch of glory is represented by the 15th - 17th centuries, when the burgh becomes an important artistic centre: painters, sculptors, some of them coming from Konigsberg, Salzburg, Bohemia, Tyrol, but also natives such as Elias Nicolai, sculptor of the Transylvanian Baroque, visited this place. We can add to them the pleiad of 17th century chroniclers, having G. Krauss as "spiritus rector". We cannot forget the famous druggist Andreas Bertramus, whose "spiritus vitriolis" became well known in the epoch.

On a political level, in the 15th century, Sighisoara becomes the second important town after Sibiu, playing a significant role in Transylvania's relations with the Romanian Country. That is how we can explain the presence at Sighisoara between 1431 and 1435 of the Wallachian prince Vlad Dracul in the Paulini house, today the Vlad Dracul House. Owner of the vast fiefs on the Olt river, from the Counties of Fagaras and Almas, he was crowned in 1431, in the cathedral of Nurnberg as prince of the Romanian Country by emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg and invested knight of the Dragon's Order. From now on, Vlad Dracul would inscribe on his armours the signs of this order, which intended to drive the Turks out of the Christian countries. As a prince of the Romanian Country he exercised an effective authority upon the entire South of Transylvania. At Sighisoara, in a silversmith's workshop, he had his coin done; the new silver ducat and he issued the document that mentions for the first time the town's Romanian name, Saghisoara. The legend tells that his son, Vlad Tepes - Draculea, the future prince of the Romanian Country, was born there. From the documents we know about his passage through Sighisoara in 1476, the year of his death.

In 1631, in the Church on the Hill, George Rakoczi was elected as prince of Transylvania and king of Hungary. The town also experienced troubled periods. In the 17th century, the Szeklers several times occupied the town. In 1676, three quarters of the town burnt down; in 1709, the plague kills 1300 out of the 3000 inhabitants of the town. In 1848, Sighisoara is caught in the center of the revolutionary events. On 31st July 1849, on the plain of Albesti (close to Sighisoara) the Hungarian revolutionary troops led by the Polish Bem were defeated by the tsarist troops called by Emperor Franz Joseph. The Hungarian poet Petofi Sandor and the Russian general Scariatin died during this battle. On the place where the Russian general fell the Scariatin monument was raised in 1852, and in Albesti, in 1897, a symbolical monument was also raised: an obelisk representing an eagle with a sword in its beak, and a little museum dedicated to the poet Petofi Sandor.

Ultima actualizare: July 3 2002