Sights in Sighişoara
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Clock Tower
Entering the citadel, you pass under the massive Clock Tower, which dates from 1280 and once housed the town council. Formerly the main entrance to the fortified city, the tower is 64m tall, with sturdy base walls measuring an impenetrable 2.35m. Inside, the 1648 clock is a pageant of slowly revolving 80cm-high figurines, carved from linden wood, each representing a character from the Greek-Roman pantheon: Peace bears an olive branch, Justice has a set of scales and Law wields a sword.
The executioner is also present and the drum-player strikes the hour. Above stand seven figures, each representing a day of the week.
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Citadel
Most of Sighişoara's sights are clustered in the compact old town - the delightful medieval Citadel - perched on a hillock and fortified with a 14th-century wall, to which 14 towers and five artillery bastions were later added. Today the citadel, which is on the Unesco World Heritage list, retains just nine of its original towers (named for the guilds in charge of their upkeep) and two of its bastions.
You'll have more than a couple of chances to get Dracula t-shirts and locally made brandy these days.
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Church on the Hill
The covered stairway leads to the 1345 Gothic Church on the Hill, a 429m Lutheran church and the town's highest point. Facing its entry - behind the church when approaching from the steps - is an atmospheric, overgrown German cemetery.
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Covered Stairway
From the Piaţa Cetăţii, turn left up Str Şcolii to the 172 steps of the Covered Stairway, which has tunnelled its way up the hill since 1642.
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History Museum
Inside the tower is the great little History Museum, with small rooms that wind up to the 7th-floor look-out above the clock. On the first floor, don't miss the small exhibit on local hero Hermann Oberth; there are some English translations (as well as the sketch of Oberth's 'space suit'). A couple of floors up are 18th-century gingerbread wood blocks, a local tradition that dates from 1376.
Above you can see the clock's famed figures, as well as the clanking innards behind. It's not made clear, but you can visit the History Museum, the medieval arms collection, and the Torture Room Museum for a combined ticket price (about the same price as the student discounts for all…
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Torture Room Museum
Under the clock tower on the right (if heading out of the old town) is the small, dark Torture Room Museum, which shows how fingers were smashed and prisoners burned with coals. The 'Spanish boot' was a happy little foot-crushing device. If it's closed, ask at the medieval arms collection for entry.
It's not made clear, but you can visit the History Museum, the medieval arms collection, and the Torture Room Museum for a combined ticket price (about the same price as the student discounts for all three).
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Collection of Medieval Arms
The small Collection of Medieval Arms has four rooms devoted to medieval helmets, shields, cross-bows, maces (aka 'whips for fight') and cannonballs. Somehow an illustration of Napoleon made the cut too. It's not made clear, but you can visit the History Museum, the medieval arms collection, and the Torture Room Museum for a combined ticket price (about the same price as the student discounts for all three).
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Casa Dracula
Continuing west towards Piaţa Cetăţii, you come to the site in which Vlad Ţepeş (Dracula) was born in 1431 and reputedly lived until the age of four. The pretty, all-renovated Casa Dracula is now a restaurant. Bubble-burster: the building is indeed centuries old, but has been completely rebuilt since Vlad's days.
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Goldsmiths' Tower
Behind the Church on the Hill are the remains of the Goldsmiths' Tower. The goldsmiths, tailors, carpenters and tinsmiths (the only craftsmen to have their guilds and workshops inside the citadel), existed until 1875.
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Piaţa Cetăţii
The quiet, miniscule Piaţa Cetăţii is the heart of old Sighişoara. It was here that markets, craft fairs, public executions, impalings and witch trials were held.
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Piaţa Hermann Oberth
Cobblestones and Dracula we can understand, but what does Sighişoara have to do with space exploration? Heaps, it turns out. If it wasn't for one of Sighişoara's most beloved residents, space might still be 'out there'. Though he was born in Sibiu, Hermann Oberth (1894-1989), considered one of the fathers of modern astronautics and rocketry, is revered as a local boy (don't remind anyone that he only spent a few years here as a child).
Inspired by Jules Verne as a skygazing tyke, he started to design space rockets at the age of 14. Later, when studying medicine and physics in Munich, he wrote prolifically about the possibility and mechanics of space travel. Most of his…
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Lutheran Church
Apart from their two churches in the citadel, Sighişoara's Saxon community had a third Lutheran Church, deliberately sited well outside the city walls. The tin-spired church, sitting inauspiciously at a rail crossing just west of the train station off Str Libertăţii ('if that sermon don't knock the devil outa'em, the rattle of the trains will!'), was used in the 17th century as an isolation compound for victims of the plague and later of leprosy.
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Church of the Dominican Monastery
The 15th-century Gothic Church of the Dominican Monastery, closed for renovation at research time, became the Saxons' main Lutheran church in 1556. Classical, folk and baroque concerts have been held here in the past.
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Statue of Vlad Ţepeş
Hidden away behind the the Church of the Dominican Monastery is a Statue of Vlad Ţepeş (Dracula), showing the legend with a bewildered look and his trademark circa-1981 porno moustache.
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Roman Catholic Church
At the northern end of Str Bastionul is the Roman Catholic Church (1896) and the Tailors' Tower (Turnul Cizmarilor) past a little park.
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Tailors' Tower
At the northern end of Str Bastionul is the Roman Catholic church (1896) and the Tailors' Tower past a little park.
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