Evocatively named Sighisoara sits in a picturesque wooded valley in Transylvania. Like Sibiu its history starts with 12th century Saxon migration. The old town sits behind a fortified wall high above the new city. Walking up the cobblestone trail through the walls is again stepping back in time to the middle ages. Brightly coloured Germanic buildings line the streets and the main square.
The massive clock tower dominates the landscape and the city walls were fortified by a succession of turrets built by the various artisanal guilds who financed and built them.
The quirky covered staircase built in 1642 covers 174 steps that take one to the top of the hill. Affording pretty views over the city and surrounding countryside it is also home to the Church on the Hill built in 1345, a school and Rope Makers’ Tower.
No visit to Sighisoara is complete without taking in the story of its most famous citizen. Born Vlad Dracul which translates to Vlad the Dragon in 1431 his penchant for killing his enemies by impaling them and subjecting them to agonising death skewered high above the parapet has history calling him Vlad Tepes, Vlad the Impaler. History actually portrays him as an innovative man of action and courageous and sucessful warrior against the Ottoman Empire. Bram Stoker’s work of fiction Dracula is said to be modeled on him and generations of Hollywood films have him captured in the popular imagination as a blood sucking vampire. Vlad was born here and the house he was born in sports a souvenir shop downstairs and a risible Count Dracula room of horrors upstairs. No matter how kitsch it seems that no visit here is complete without the Dracula experience.
