Sibiu: Magical Kingdom

The last thing I expected to encounter in Romania was a “once upon a time” experience. Yet here I was walking along the stonepaved path from the local train station into Sibiu’s charming arcaded Piata Mara (Big Square). Lined with goldenstone Baroque and medieval shops, churches and palaces, the square was long ago the site of a grain market, carnivals and public executions. Here, the original major city of Saxon Transylvania has been carefully preserved in a sort of time warp; a magical, age-old town.

I had never even heard of Sibiu when I arrived to explore the “romantic” Balkan region. I always look for traces of each country’s unique history and culture, and I’d spent a day trudging around Romania’s capital city, Bucharest, dismayed at the aftermath of Communist megalomania. During the ’80s, before their execution by firing squad, then-dictator Nicolae Ceausecu and his harridan wife Elena had bulldozed the historic center to pave the way for their mammoth seat of government. Today that colossal 1,100-room Palace of Parliament, garnished with marble columns, 4,500 chandeliers and a lobby the length of a football field, is second only to the Pentagon as the world’s largest administrative building.

Seeking more traditional monuments, I boarded the northbound train toward the Transylvania sites of “Dracula’s” castle and the picturesque hilltop bastion of Sighisoara, alleged to be the notorious Impaler’s birthplace. But I fell asleep. When I woke up, well past my intended stop, I took a tip from the guidebooks and kept going — all the way to Sibiu. It was a felicitous decision.

Founded in the 1190s and centrally located on the trade route to Germany, Sibiu prospered in the 12th to 14th centuries, a city of thrifty, hard-working merchant traders. Wary of jealous neighboring states, the citizens built four concentric defensive stone walls around the town, plus 39 towers, each manned and protected by a different guild. Sections of the original walls remain scattered around the city, and towers of the Carpenters, Tanners and Potters are still standing.

Among the colorful arcaded buildings of the Piata Mica (Little Square), I found the Casa Luxembourg. Helpful proprietors ensconced me in a spacious, modern room; stark, but comfortably furnished. From my third-floor perch, I looked out across the square toward a 17th-century apothecary shop (now a Pharmacy Museum) and down onto the elegant wrought-iron Liars’ Bridge which, according to legend, will collapse if anyone standing on it tells a lie.

Directly below my window, in the middle of the square, city residents were setting up a circle of timber kiosks for an upcoming holiday crafts show. Each little booth had on its roof one of the “eyes” characteristic of Sibiu’s townhouses — oval-slit windows with “eyelid” ridges tucked into the red tile shingles. It was as if I’d settled into a fairy tale.

Walking across the Piata Mica, I climbed the narrow winding stairs of the 13th-century Councillors’ Tower. Feeling not unlike Rapunzel, I looked out over the city’s three intersecting squares, connected during the Middle Ages by tunnels and gateways and other strategic defenses designed to combat hostile threats.

Posters lining the tower’s lower gallery illustrate the city’s plans for preserving its character. Sibiu was designated by the European Union as the European Capital of Culture 2007. At the time of my visit, the city was just winding up a year-long series of concerts, festivals and cultural events. That special year notwithstanding, Sibiu hosts several annual festivals: jazz (May), theater (May-June), country and folk music (July) and opera (late September), with performances scheduled in churches, palaces and tents on the squares.

The treasure-trove of the National Brukenthal Museum, one of the count ry’s best art galleries, anchors the southern edge of the expansive central square. Built around a square central patio, the elegant Baroque palace opened in 1817, three years before the Louvre. Its core collection of Flemish, Italian and French Old Masters was assembled by Baron Samuel von Brukenthal, a remarkable 18th-century Transylvania governor and Enlightenment figure noted for nurturing democracy and homeopathy — and art.

With big, thick snowflakes falling gently around me like friendly birds hovering around Snow White’s shoulders, I wandered along the wide pedestrian main street, poking into craft and jewelry shops and buying hand-knit socks in a primitive version of an American dollar store. Since Romania hasn’t yet adopted the euro, values are good. I found full-length, cable-knit wool sweater dresses for half what they cost back home. In a remarkably trendy dress shop I resisted a flounced blue satin gown that would have done Cinderella proud.

I’d planned dinner in the elegant dining room of the Imperatul Romanilor, Sibiu’s grande dame hotel, but after a solemn cocktail I decided to try something less formal and opted for the cozy bustle of the storefront Restaurant La Turn. There I savored traditional red cabbage and stuffed peppers, dishes local peasants have enjoyed through the ages.

The next day I found the traditional road house inn I’d been fancying. Four miles south of town, more than a hundred relocated historic wooden buildings nestled lake-side comprise the open-air Museum of Traditional Folk Civilization. Clumped by usage — agricultural, manufacturing, worship, industrial — the timber structures illustrate Romania’s enduring ingenuity with wood: floating windmills from the Black Sea, distilleries, wine presses, subterranean apple warehouses. In the recreation section, just across from a charming old-time wooden Ferris wheel and beside an antique wooden bowling alley (!), a traditional roadside inn serves lunches, snacks and dinner. Sitting on a bench beside the fire, I warmed up with a glass of mulled wine and a delicious flame-grilled sausage.

On the drive out to the Folk Museum, I had asked about transportation back to Sighisoara. “You want a ride?” the driver asked. “I can help you.” Promptly at 3 p.m., a young man, the driver’s son, returned for me. As we passed by farmers in the fields and horse-drawn wagons on the road, he showed me cell phone photos of his son and baby daughter and talked about his car-hire business.

It wasn’t a ride in a pumpkin coach, but instead a sedan carrying me between Romania’s juxtapositions in time.