Sighisoara, one of the few inhabited citadels in the world, is a beautiful illustration of mediaeval city building. The Sighisoara citadel built in 1191 by Saxon colonists on a hill overlooking the left bank of the Tarnava Mare River, has preserved precisely the elements of the mediaeval universe. After we enter this miraculous space, passing beneath the arcade of the old Clock tower, which for centuries has measured the tireless flow of time, we arrive in the central square of the citadel. It was here that, in days gone by, trials were held and executions carried out. It was also here that the "pole of infamy" was to be found, to which evildoers were bound, with a six kilogram stone hanging from their neck. Then we enter the church of the former Dominican monastery, founded in the thirteen century, with its baroque altar, sculpted in 1680 by Johann West and painted by wandering artist Jeremias Stranovius.

Hence we pass by the Venetian house, the House of Vlad Dracul and the Stag House, before venturing down one of the narrow cobbled streets that wind down the hill, lined with old houses painted in pastel shades and with wooden shutters. We pass beneath street lamps that cast their ghostly light in the shadows of evening; we climb those one hundred and seventy-five steps of the Scholars Stair before reaching the highest point of the citadel, where can be found the fourteenth century Church on the Hill, an impressive monument of gothic architecture. Hence we descend by the old fourteenth century walls, which, at a length of 920 meters enclose the Citadel Hill, formerly bolstered by redoubtable bastions and fourteen defense turrets, of which nine have been preserved. The citadel was once inhabited mainly by craftsmen, who - as is known- dominated material production in the middle Ages. They occupied a central place in the life of the community, and were responsible for the material support of the church and citadels defensive system. As such, the richest guilds each had to defend and maintain a tower and a section of the defensive wall. The towers thus came to be named after the guilds that tended them: in Sighisoara we can see the Towers of the Tanners, Tinsmiths, Ropers, Butchers, Furriers, Tailors, Cobblers and Blacksmiths.

Walking through the old citadel of Sighisoara, with its approximately one hundred and fifty inhabited buildings, most of which are more than three hundred years old, we may, with a little imagination, reconstruct a number of aspects of everyday mediaeval life. In any case, every year, for three days in the last week of July, Sighisoara returns to the Middle Ages: knights in shinning armor compete in tournaments, there are witch trials, ladies in resplendent gowns appear everywhere, minstrels sing their songs, and on every street corner there are improvised plays, concerts of medieval music and all kids of other performances.During the Festival of Mediaeval Arts, the streets of the citadel are thronged with the thousands of tourists who come to take part in this picturesque event.