Sighișoara, the medieval citadel still lived in, in Transylvania

Climbing towards the old citadel of Sighișoara, you leave the lower town behind and enter a maze of houses in ochre, pink and sea-green, perched on a hill in the heart of Transylvania. It is one of the few fortified medieval centres still lived in: behind the façades there are not only museums, but families, washing hung out to dry, windows with geraniums. You walk on uneven cobbles and realise that the main sound is that of your own footsteps.

The symbol is the Clock Tower, tall and squat, with its glazed tiles and the mechanism that moves little wooden figures. From its summit the gaze runs over the red roofs and the wooded hills all around. A little further on, the Covered Staircase climbs under the shelter of wood up to the church on the hill, while old guild towers buttress the walls that once defended the Saxon community.

Sighișoara appears in the guidebooks, but it stays far from the pressure of better-known destinations. In the side lanes you may not cross paths with anyone for whole minutes at a time. The advice is simple: sleep a night within the walls. When the coaches leave again in the late afternoon, the citadel breathes once more and the warm light sets the walls aglow. Eat in a local trattoria, choose family-run lodgings, leave the car outside and get around on foot.

To avoid even the small summer crowds, aim for late spring or early autumn, when the climate is mild and the colours of the hills are at their best. Sighișoara does not ask to be conquered in a hurry: it asks you to sit on a step, listen to the silence and let the stone tell, without staging, its long story.

Getting there

Sighișoara has a railway station a few minutes' walk from the upper town, with direct trains from Bucharest, Brașov, Sibiu and Cluj-Napoca. The nearest airport is Târgu Mureș, followed by Sibiu and Cluj, all an hour or two away by road. By car it is reached on the route linking Cluj-Napoca to Brașov, in the heart of Transylvania.