Sighișoara is a small Medieval fortified city, home to an array of churches, townhouses, and defensive works. The Clock Tower is the iconic structure of the city, guarding the main entrance to the citadel. There are a further eight towers that guard the walls of the citadel, each named after the guild of Saxon craftsmen that paid for its construction: Butchers, Bootmakers, Furriers, Ironsmiths, Ropemakers, Tailors, Tanners, and Tinsmiths. Biserica din Deal, the Church on the Hill, is the largest of the churches and its hilltop location offers a great view over the rest of the city with its Medieval core and surrounding suburbs along the banks of the River Târnava Mare. There is a wonderful wooden covered staircase that links the church and adjoining old schoolhouse with the citadel below. The core zone is restricted to the citadel and its immediate surroundings although there are a few good sights beyond, including a 20th Century Byzantine-inspired Orthodox church on the north bank of the river. Beyond the city, the countryside of Mureș, Brașov, and Sibiu counties contains some delightful villages and natural landscapes, including another World Heritage Site in the fortified churches of Biertan, Viscri, and so on.

However, the site that seems to attract the most tourist attention is one yellow house in particular that claims to have been home to Vlad II and Vlad III, father and son who ruled over Wallachia in the 15th Century. Caught between the two great powers of the Kingdom of Hungary to the north and the Ottoman Empire to the south, the Wallachians had no shortage of enemies to contend with externally and internal divisions too, with Romanians, Hungarians, and Saxons all vying for power. Vlad III considered the Saxons, who had made Sighișoara a wealthy town of traders and craftsmen, the chief supporters of his rival for the throne and so looted and pillaged their villages. In the process he killed large numbers of the population and speared their bodies on stakes and so earning the epithet ‘the Impaler’ in the process. Nevertheless, he is considered by some a national hero of Romania for his efforts to secure independence before he died in battle against the Turks in 1477. Today, Vlad III Drăculea is well known in the west as the supposed basis for Bram Stoker’s famed vampire Count Dracula from the novel of 1897. Whilst Stoker was inspired by Romanian folklore of blood-sucking monsters, academics debate how much he actually knew about Vlad III beyond his name. Some argue that he had only seen the name in passing and selected a Transylvanian origin for the fictional Dracula only because the local Székely people, a subgroup of Hungarians, were believed to have descended from the equally cruel and vicious Attila the Hun. Regardless of the truth, the people of Sighișoara take full advantage of this legend to attract tourists and sell vampiric merchandise.

It was near Sighișoara that the Battle of Segesvár took place as part of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, in which the national poet of Hungary, Sándor Petőfi, perished. It was only with Russian support that Habsburg Austria was able to retain control of Hungary but the event was a key moment in the re-emergence of the national Hungarian identity. Today, however, it is a predominantly Romanian city and there is a statue just below the citadel of a wolf suckling the twins Romulus and Remus, gifted by the city of Rome to solidify the city’s now Latin culture over its Germanic and Hungarian heritage. Sighișoara is a fine example of the confluence of the cultures of central and south-eastern Europe, a medley of Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox, and (very limited) Islamic influences. It can hardly count as one of the great cities of Europe but I certainly enjoyed walking around for half a day.