Romania Saxon Village 🇷🇴 Villages With Fortified Churches in Transylvania

The village of Transylvania with their fortified churches provide a vivid picture of the cultural landscape of the southern part of this region of Romania. They are characterized by the specific land use system, settlement pattern, and organization of the family farmstead units preserved since the late Middle Ages, dominated by their fortified churches, which illustrate building periods from the 13th through the 16th centuries. During the first quarter of the 16th century, the old Romanesque chapel of the village of Viscri was enlarged to form a single nave church with a fortified story resting on semi-circular arches supported by massive buttresses. The conical roof of the bell tower is raised and has a hoarding. The Saxon museum is located in the fortress and features several rooms that show the now almost extinct Saxon culture that dominated the area in the Middle Ages. Saxons arrived in Transylvania during the mid-1100s from the Rhine and Moselle rivers regions, responding to the call of King Géza II of Hungary. The plan of the former Saxon Romanesque church was simple, with a single nave, a flat ceiling, and a semi-circular apse on its eastern side. For decades, the main task of the Saxon settlers was to defend the southeastern border of the Kingdom of Hungary. Viscri is first mentioned in written documents in the 1400s, though it is believed to have been settled in the 12th century on the site of a small chapel, which eventually grew into the fortified church that stands today. Located in the vineyards valley, the Vale or Vilor fortified church, the Church of Saint Peter, was transformed into the late Gothic style and fortified at the beginning of the 16th century. One or several defensive stories were built above the choir, nave, and tower, all of which communicate with each other. The porches of the northern and southern entrances are protected by small towers with portcullises. The oval encente was also reorganized at the time. The 6 to 7 meter high wall supporting the covered way and a sloping shingled roof leads to loopholes, machicolations, and embrasures. Access is from the vaulted gallery of the western bastion, which juts out from the line of the defensive wall. Vale or Vilor was first mentioned in 1305, when its owner, Count Apafy, passed away. In a document from this period the village was referred to as Tere Baromlak, which means Land of the Cattle. The German name appears half a century later in a document that acknowledges the church of Vormlach as belonging to the superior consul of Schalk. Szigiszwara is a town with an impressive history. It began in the Middle Ages as a defensive point on the frontier of the Kingdom of Hungary. Throughout its history the city played an important role in the lives of the inhabitants of the region, especially as an administrative and commercial center, thanks to the presence of German artisans and craftsmen, as well as a political hub where George I Rakozy was elected as Transylvanian prince and Hungarian king in the 17th century. The old town literally resides in the citadel enclosure, and this is also where some of the most important historical buildings are found, including the history museum, the church on the hill, and the 300-year-old wood-covered staircase built to facilitate students' access to the school on the hill. The town played an important strategic and commercial role at the edges of Central Europe for several centuries. Szigiszwara became one of the most important towns of Transylvania, with artisans from throughout the Holy Roman Empire visiting the settlement. The urban economy was dominated by German artisans and craftsmen, and it is estimated that during the 16th and 17th centuries, Szigiszwara had as many as 15 guilds and 25 handicraft branches. Szigiszwara is also famous as the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, better known as Count Dracula. Szigiszwara is considered one of the most beautiful and best-preserved citadels in Europe, thanks to the unique architectural features that characterize its medieval-era houses and buildings. This beautiful Gothic church dominates the hill at the southern end of the citadel. It can be reached by climbing the 175 steps of the covered wooden schoolboy stairs, which dates from 1642. Construction of the church was begun in 1345 and completed in 1525, 180 years later. Massive pillars support a lofty Gothic ceiling. The interior of the church is adorned with a variety of splendid religious sculptures and paintings, such as a pulpit carved in 1480, an old stone font dating from the 15th century, as well as shrines brought from the churches of Seyss and Kund. The church was once completely painted on the inside, but in 1776 it was decided to remove the original painting, provided that exact copies be made on parchment. Recent restoration work has brought out fragments of the late 15th century frescoes. Landmark of Szigiszwara, the clock tower is the most impressive and picturesque of its towers. It originally served as the main gate into the citadel, and to house the town's council. The clock tower was built in the second half of the 14th century and expanded to a height of 64 meters in the 16th century. Since the old village stronghold standing on top of the hill was probably abandoned because it could no longer protect its inhabitants, it was decided in the late 15th century to replace the Romanesque church and its ensant with a new and more accessible church in the late Gothic style. The defensive story gives the church of St. Stephen the appearance of a high bastion with a projecting quadrangular sacristy tower. The buildings and defenses erected by the Saxons of Transylvania had a cultural influence on the surrounding region, starting with their subjugated Saxon villages, which tried to imitate the defensive and organizational structures of the free communities as much as possible. Prešmir is noted for its fortified church, one of the best preserved of its kind in Eastern Europe. The church is modeled after the churches of Jerusalem, although it also incorporates features of the late Gothic churches from the Rhineland. Like so many monuments in Transylvania, the fortified church at Prešmir underwent various interventions over the centuries, but thanks to the restoration work carried out during the 1960s and 70s, it has recovered its original appearance. The fortification now has two precincts, a large circular one and a smaller one supporting the vaulted passageway of the gate. In the 15th century, a 12-meter high wall forming a quadrilateral with rounded corners surrounded the church. Four horseshoe-shaped towers, two of which have since disappeared, reinforce the walls. The walls of the circular precinct premises are as thick as 5 meters at their base and rise up 12 meters above ground level. The walls are fitted with battlements and machicolations and reinforced on the outside by several quasi-circular bastions. On the inside, the wall is lined all around with larders that even provided housing during times of war. These larders were accessed by a complex system of ladders and platforms. Inside the church, a valuable polyptych altar depicting Christ's Passion dating from the mid-15th century has been preserved. The beginnings of the Holy Cross Church in Prešmir relate to the rule of the Teutonic Knights in Birsa County. Widely considered the most powerful peasant fortification in medieval Transylvania, the fortress encompassing the church in Prešmir was built between the 15th and 16th centuries. In 1240, the church and its associated domain were repossessed by the Cistercian monks. Erected in the 13th century in the early Gothic style, the church has a Latin cross-planned building with an octagonal tower rising over the nave, odrival vaults, and side chapels that flank the polygonal-shaped main apse. The village preserves ethnological and historical values illustrating the life of a multi-ethnic community. The village of Kalnik is home to one of the oldest fortresses in Transylvania. Built around the year 1200, it was mentioned in writing around 1267 as owned by the Kelling Count. Of large proportions, the dungeon at Kalnik, also called Siegfried's Tower, was built with raw stone and has a quadrilateral plan. Its walls are one meter thick. The peasant fortress at Kalnik is located on a promontory surrounded by a river at one end of the village. The fortified residence, built around 1260, consists of a three-story dwelling tower, a chapel, and an oval incense. It is interesting to note the way these fortifications have preserved and adapted the special conditions of previous monuments. Most of them display a transformation, for defensive purposes, of the entire repertory of forms and plans of short Romanesque basilicas, with or without a western tower, and single-nave churches belonging to the late Gothic period. In certain cases, these fortifications have created monuments with a dual function, sacred and defensive, that is perfectly balanced from the point of view of form and function. The cellar ground floor and the first floor, which served as a residence house, were vaulted in a semi-circular shape. Entrance to the gate tower is gained through a vaulted covered walkway, equipped with a kind of grill gate ending in stakes called a hersa, which, pulled down swiftly, would isolate the besiegers' vanguard from the bulk of their army. An on-site medieval art museum displays various artifacts. The town of Biertan is one of the oldest settlements in Transylvania. Perched on top of a hill, the church is the heart of a fortress with three defense walls and six towers. The architectonic ensemble from Biertan impresses by harmonious matching and locality, by its aesthetic and historic value, and especially by the original substance preserved since the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century. The church is built in the late Gothic style with Renaissance elements, and was rather limited in its design by the configuration of the ground that it was built on. The complex is accessed from the north by a set of covered stairs that link the ex-headquarters and the bell tower. Visitors can also admire the towers surrounding the church, namely the clock tower, the bell tower, the gate tower, and, of course, the bacon tower. There is also a tower called the prison, where married couples seeking divorce were incarcerated in the Middle Ages. This place offers many incredible medieval artifacts to explore. Even today, Transylvania is a fairytale land that is home to a wealth of well-preserved towns and fortified churches that were built between the 13th and 15th centuries by Saxon settlers from the German Rhineland.