Fortified Cities and Churches

6fartsinacart
Jul 10, 2017
5 min read

1 July 2017, Saturday: After our late night, or rather early morning, we manage to get ourselves out of bed around 9am and spend our last morning with the Ionescu family and German volunteers, until we leave around 11am. We make our way to Râşnov to have a look around the walled fortified city, located on a rocky hilltop 650 feet above the town. It’s one of the largest and most remarkable medieval monuments in Transylvania, a solid example of defensive constructions used to survive in a time when Ottoman and Tatar attacks destroyed entire cities and villages. We then continue to Bran. Surrounded by an aura of mystery and legend and perched high atop a 200-foot-high rock, Bran Castle owes its fame to its imposing towers and turrets as well as to the myth created around Bram Stocker’s ‘Dracula’. The Castle overlooks the picturesque village of Bran which offers an open-air Ethnographic Museum consisting of local-style village houses complete with furniture, household objects and costumes. Afterwards we take the 11km journey to the Parcul National Piatra Craiului in the mountains near Zărneşti and park next to the river for the night. 2 July 2017, Sunday: Last night we once again had a thunderstorm… frightening close-by, with spectacular lightning… lighting up the inside of Merzy quite effectively. It is still drizzling a bit as we prepare to leave, but by the time we depart, the sun is out and the surrounding nature is looking lovely and green, glistening with water droplets. At 12.30pm we stop in Prejmer to explore the fortified church. The admission fee is only 5 Lei per child and 10 Lei per adult and is well worth the visit. The wall surrounding the church is filled with over 270 rooms for refuge and storage of provisions, distributed on two, or sometimes up to four levels, with a hallway along the top that goes right around the wall. A few rooms contain old articles that the people used. One of them even contains an old schoolroom with old counting charts. The church at the centre is not the main attraction, but also worth having a look inside. We exit at 1.30pm, have lunch and are on our way again… this time to the fortified city at Rupea. We are taking the smaller, less travelled roads and at some point we need to cross a bridge. We notice a boom on the other side which looks ominously low. Our dilemma… if we can’t fit through we’ll have to turn around and go all the way back (quite some distance) to take the main road. We decide to risk holding up the traffic, since it is a single track bridge, to see if we will be able to pass underneath. To our delight and manoeuvring to one side we manage with less than an inch to spare. God is good! All the time! We stop at 5pm and enter the old fortified city. Most of the city has been reconstructed which gives us a very good idea of what the rooms looked like during its occupation. There are no furniture or old artefacts though. After an hour of exploring we set off to Sighişoara. It starts raining along the way and we continue to a nature reserve/national park, on a plateau above the city, approximately 6 km from Sighişoara. 3 July 2017, Monday: It has been raining throughout the night. We lie in as the rain keeps coming down abundantly. Emile decides it’s a good opportunity to start the day with a hearty pot of polenta. On our way out we need to go through a muddy ditch. After having to go backwards and attempting the exit from a different angle, Merzy manages to make it through with the help of five pairs of hands. Phew! We head for Kaufland, not to shop, but to see if we can find a better internet connection. No success though, so we depart after a late lunch and take the road to the next WWOOF farm at Moşna. We arrive at Schuster Farm just after 5pm. Willy gives us a brief introduction and shows us around. We are just in time to see how Tete is busy milking the cows. We meet the rest of the family, Lavinia, his wife and their kids, Rahel, Joel and Stephane. We gather around the table for different types of home-made cheese, jam, egg-plant salad, fried wild mushrooms, home-baked bread… all organic and very tasty! We return to Merzy, with filled up tummies and ready to hit the sack.

Cetatea Râșnov/Râșnov Fortress

Pretty pretzel tower... interesting stuff at the craft and farmer's market in Bran

Bran Castle, perched high atop a 200-foot-high rock

Bran Castle's imposing towers and turrets

Stop for the night at 'Parcul National Piatra Craiului' (National Park/Nature Reserve)

Râșnov Fortress, located on a rocky hilltop 650 feet above the town

Prejmer Fortress has the most fortified walls of any of the fortified churches of Transylvania

The entrance of Prejmer Fortress is a separate fortress with portcullis, complete with holes once used for pouring boiling tar on would be invaders

Inside the fortress there are over 270 rooms for refuge and storage of provisions, distributed on 2, or sometimes up to 4 levels

Intrepid explorers

More little rooms to explore

Church tower

Different angle... and fortified for sure!

Too slow... so lets just overtake

Phew... just just made it by an inch!

Cetatea Rupea covers an area of about 1 hectare with walls, towers and courtyards

Middle Fortress

Servants Tower

The Main Gate Tower of the Lower Fortress was equipped with a drawbridge that sat over the “mouth of the wolf” (trench trap) of its exterior

The Middle Fortress Gate was built after the fortress was destroyed by the Turks in 1421. The remains of the Ungra Tower (corner tower) are on the left

Upper Fortress

The Scouts Tower, a flanking tower with 3 levels of outdoor entrances, located on the western side of the enclosure and provided with loopholes on all 3 exterior sides

The Tower Câpos had its role in the 15th century, but lost its importance due to the enlargement of curtain walls

The Pentagonal Tower was the most important tower of the 16th century and was built to defend the north side of the Middle Fortress

The Scribe Tower housed the old Middle Fortress Gate equipped with vaulted access to the ground floor. The upstairs level was designed for living, showing traces of stove chimneys, niches for various utilities and neat floors

Strutting down the 'boardwalk'

Walls of the Upper Fortress

House C, one of the nearly one hundred houses built inside the fortress during the 16th and 17th centuries, and one of the few preserved up to the roof