5 Days in Sibiu

Start on Piața Mare, the Great Square, the heart of the town since the 1400s, lined with the houses of rich Saxon merchants. Look up at the roofs: the small slit-like dormer windows, the "eyes of Sibiu", were made to air the attics where families stored grain and meat, and they give the whole town its look of watching you.

On one side is the white baroque Jesuit church of 1726-33, built when the Catholic Habsburgs took over a Lutheran town. On the corner stands the Council Tower, the symbol of Sibiu and the gate between the Great and Small Squares, built in the 13th century. It's closed for restoration until around 2028; check whether the passage underneath is open.

The baroque palace on the west side of the square belonged to Samuel von Brukenthal, a Saxon who rose to be governor of Transylvania for Empress Maria Theresa in the 1770s and 80s. He filled it with paintings, books and minerals, and his will opened it to the public in 1817, which makes the Brukenthal National Museum the oldest museum in Romania.

The European gallery upstairs has Flemish and German masters, among them a small portrait of a man in a blue headdress by Jan van Eyck himself and a Massacre of the Innocents by Pieter Bruegel the Younger, hung in rooms that still feel like a private house. The Romanian gallery on the other side is worth a look too.

Walk past the Council Tower to Piața Mică, the Small Square, where the old guild houses have arcades on the ground floor and cafés under them. Have lunch on a terrace: ciorbă, a sour soup that is the start of every Romanian meal, and mici, small grilled rolls of minced meat with mustard. Or start with what Sibiu does best, its cheeses, from the shepherd villages you'll visit on day four.

Right off the Small Square, the Bridge of Lies of 1859 was the first cast-iron bridge in Romania. The legend says it creaks, or collapses, if someone tells a lie while standing on it, and that young men who lied to girls here got thrown off. The real story of the name is duller: in German a bridge resting without pillars was a Liegebrücke, a "lying" bridge, which people heard as Lügenbrücke, the bridge of lies.

On the square, in the old Butchers' Guild hall, Casa Artelor houses the ASTRA museum's award-winning exhibition of Transylvanian crafts, Făurind Transilvania. A few doors along is the Pharmacy Museum, in a house of 1568 where the Black Bear pharmacy opened around 1600.

From the Small Square, walk to Piața Huet, the oldest part of town, and the Lutheran Cathedral of St. Mary, a Gothic church built from the 14th century to 1520. Inside are a 1445 fresco of the Crucifixion by Johannes of Rosenau, the tombstones of Saxon mayors, and that of Mihnea the Bad, a prince of Wallachia and son of Vlad the Impaler, who was stabbed to death at the church door in 1510. The Sauer organ of 1914 is the largest in Transylvania, and there are short concerts on Friday at noon and Saturday evenings.

Then climb the tower, 73 meters high and the tallest in Sibiu. With the Council Tower closed, this is the view of Sibiu: the squares, the eyes in the roofs, and on a clear day the Făgăraș mountains white on the horizon.

Walk down the Passage of Stairs (Pasajul Scărilor), a stairway from the early 1300s that drops from Piața Huet past the old walls to the Lower Town, the craftsmen's quarter. At the bottom, Butoiul de Aur is a long-running restaurant with live music later in the week, and Crama Sibiul Vechi, a cellar across the Upper Town, serves Romanian food with folk music on many nights.

Order sarmale, cabbage rolls with polenta and sour cream, and finish with papanași, fried cheese doughnuts with sour cream and jam.

Start in the Lower Town (Orașul de Jos), where the potters, tanners and other craftsmen lived below the walls. The houses are smaller and more colorful here, with big wooden gates onto courtyards. Find Piața Aurarilor, the little Goldsmiths' Square, with stairs and passages climbing from it to the Upper Town; it's one of the most photogenic corners of Sibiu and often empty. Climb those steps back up to the Small Square for the next stop.

The Altemberger House, built in 1470-91 by the mayor Thomas Altemberger, served as Sibiu's town hall for 400 years. Now the Brukenthal's History Museum, it tells the story of the Saxons, their guilds and their town, with weapons, guild chests, glass and a hall of the town's old treasures, in a building that is itself the best exhibit.

A few minutes away on Strada Mitropoliei, the Holy Trinity Cathedral was built in 1902-06 as the seat of the Orthodox Metropolitan of Transylvania, on a plan modeled on Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. For centuries the Romanians of Transylvania had been kept outside Sibiu's walls; this was their answer, built in the Saxon capital itself. Inside, the dome and walls are painted and gilded from top to bottom.

Walk back towards the squares for coffee and a slice of hencleș (Hanklich in German), the Saxon sheet cake, a yeast dough topped with a sweet, creamy layer of cheese or cream. It was traditionally baked with the weekly bread. It isn't on every menu, so ask in the bakeries and cafés around the squares.

Sibiu had four rings of walls and nearly 40 towers, each defended by a guild, and it was never taken by the Ottomans. The best piece left runs along Strada Cetății, on the southeast side of the old town: the Arquebusiers' Tower, the Potters' Tower and the Carpenters' Tower in a row, with a park along the outside of the walls. Walk it from end to end.

At its northeast end, the old Thick Tower was turned into a theater in 1788, the first theater building in what is now Romania, and today it's part of Thalia Hall, the home of the Sibiu Philharmonic.

From the end of the walls, walk 15 minutes south to Sub Arini, a park of old trees laid out in the 1850s, where Sibiu goes running and walking. Then come back for the evening. Check the program at Thalia Hall for a Philharmonic concert, or at the Radu Stanca National Theater, the theater behind the festival; if nothing's on, a wine bar in the old town pouring whites from the Târnave valleys is the next best thing.

The ASTRA Museum of Traditional Folk Civilization is one of the biggest open-air museums in Europe: about 96 hectares of forest and lakes with more than 400 buildings brought here from all over Romania. There are wooden churches, water mills, windmills, fulling mills, potters' workshops, sheepfolds and whole farmsteads, arranged by region along some 10 km of paths.

Walk slowly, and go into the houses where you can; on many days craftspeople work in them. There's an old village inn in the park where you can have lunch: a bowl of ciorbă, then mămăligă, the Romanian polenta, with cheese and sour cream.

From ASTRA, take a Bolt 15 minutes south to the village of Cisnădioara (Michelsberg), under a steep wooded hill. On top, reached by a 15-minute climb, is a small Romanesque basilica built around 1200, one of the oldest churches in Transylvania, inside a ring of walls. The story is that young men had to carry stones up the hill before they could marry. The view over the village and the hills to the Făgăraș is worth the climb.

Ten minutes east by car, Cisnădie (Heltau) is a Saxon town that grew rich on weaving. Its fortified church, Romanesque at heart, has a tall tower; it was the first in Transylvania to get a lightning rod, in 1795. The fortress holds a small museum of the town's history.

Back in town, spend the evening around Piața Mică and Strada Nicolae Bălcescu, where the terraces stay busy late. Sibiu has brewed beer for centuries, and today several local craft brewers pour their beer in bars around the squares. Try a Romanian IPA or a pale ale.

Start in Rășinari, 14 km south, one of the oldest Romanian villages in the area, with long streets of houses with big wooden gates, an ethnographic museum and the church of St. Paraschiva, built in 1725-58 and painted inside in 1752. The philosopher Emil Cioran was born here in 1911, the son of the village priest, and spent the rest of his life in Paris writing that it would have been better not to be born; he remembered his childhood here as a lost paradise. His birth house is marked by a plaque and a bust, and the poet Octavian Goga was born a few steps away.

Drive west to Sibiel, a small village with a museum of almost 600 icons painted on glass, the largest collection of its kind in Transylvania, put together from 1969 by the village priest Zosim Oancea, who had spent 15 years in communist prisons and labor camps. The Transylvanian peasants painted saints on the back of glass in bright, simple colors, and the effect is simple and striking.

This is cheese country. The villages make telemea, a salty white cheese kept in brine, brânză de burduf, sharp sheep's cheese packed into a sheep's skin or into rolls of fir bark, and urdă, a fresh whey cheese. Have lunch at a guesthouse that cooks local food (book a day ahead; many cook only for guests who call): polenta with cheese and sour cream, bulz (polenta wrapped around cheese and baked) and lamb in season. Some families sell cheese from their gates; look for a handwritten sign.

Săliște was the center of the Mărginimea, with merchant houses built by shepherds who got rich trading wool; Gura Râului, back towards Sibiu, sits at the mouth of a valley that runs into the mountains, with a 73-meter dam above it that holds Sibiu's drinking water. Drive slowly, stop where the light is good, and you may meet a flock on the road.

Drive back in the late afternoon and have a quiet dinner in the old town. If the Christmas market or a festival is on, the Great Square will be lit up and full.

On the way north, stop in Valea Viilor (Wurmloch), a village of wine and orchards whose 15th-century church was turned into a fortress with walls, towers and a fortified upper floor over the choir. It's small, complete and on the UNESCO list; the church is often opened by a keyholder, so ask in the village if the gate is shut.

Biertan is the most famous of them all: a big late-Gothic church of the 1490s-1520s on a hill, inside three rings of walls with towers, above a village of colorful Saxon houses. It was the seat of the Lutheran bishops of Transylvania for almost 300 years. Inside, the altar has 28 painted panels, and the sacristy door has a famously complicated lock of 1515, with more than a dozen bolts, that was shown at a Paris World's Fair.

One of the towers holds the "marriage prison", where couples who wanted to divorce were locked up together for up to two weeks, with one bed, one plate and one spoon. The local story says only one couple in 300 years still wanted to divorce afterwards.

Have lunch in Biertan or on the way back: a guesthouse in a Saxon farmhouse is the best option, with soup, sarmale and homemade pălincă. This is the Târnave wine region, Transylvania's best-known for white wine; ask for a local Fetească Regală.

On the way back, stop in Mediaș, the second Saxon town of the region, with a fortified church in the middle of town whose 68-meter Trumpeters' Tower leans clearly to one side. Vlad the Impaler is said to have been held prisoner in it in 1476. The square below it is a quieter, smaller version of Sibiu's.

For the last night, book a table in the old town and order what you liked best: Mărginimea cheese, sarmale, a slow-cooked pork dish or game, and a bottle from the Târnave. End with a glass of țuică, the plum brandy, and a last walk across the Great Square, lit and quiet, under the eyes of the roofs.