Guide to Beautiful, Medieval Sighisoara, Romania

When planning our trip to Romania, my friend and I were lucky enough to have the help of one of our best friends (and previous groom!) Dragos. Dragos and his family are from Romania, so he gave us the inside scoop on what is good to see. When he told us that Sighisoara was his favorite city in Transylvania, there were no questions asked- we knew we had to go there.

Sighisoara was beyond anything I could have expected. It was quaint, authentic, colorful, and full of character. This medieval town is in the northern part of Transylvania about 4 hours from Bucharest. In planning our trip, I decided to keep an open itinerary- meaning that we just kind of winged it. We had our guide books, and a rough idea of what we wanted to do, but just let things happen day by day. The day we arrived in Sighisoara, we had a later than anticipated start out of Bucharest. We ended up driving in the dark for a bit and  didn’t come into town until around 10:30pm. Seeing as there aren’t many well marked street signs, and researching online is semi impossible unless you speak Romanian, we just rolled up to a Pensione that looked good near the city center to see if they had a room. Wow did we luck out. We got the loveliest, cleanest, friendliest, most affordable little place right next to the citadel for only E30/nt (including breakfast). As we went along our trip, we found out places like this were the norm, rather than the exception. It made “winging it” a pretty awesome experience.

The next day, we started our exploration of the city. I grabbed the camera and we headed out towards the Citadel. Sighisoara was established in the late 1200’s. People still live in the ancient colorful buildings of the city center (Citadel) and you can visit the church on a hill and graveyard. Wandering around the cobblestone streets, you come across beautiful scene after beautiful scene. All in all, it is a really cool place.

The people of Sighisoara are amazing too! While unicycling, my friend befriended a woman smoking out of her window downtown. She didn’t speak any English, but saw that we were photographers, and wanted to invite us in for a cup of coffee so that she could show us the pictures she had of her family. From what I was able to gather, she is a very lonely lady, left all alone in Romania while her family lives in Michigan. For whatever reason, she can’t get a Visa, but she is able to talk with her family online. She cried while she talked to us, and we gave her a hug. We got her address to send her a letter. Hopefully our friend Dragos can translate into Romanian for us.

We ended up staying four wonderful days in Sighisoara before heading over to Viscri and Sibiu. Everywhere we went to was a little bit different, but all had wonderful people and delicious food. Be sure to stay posted for our next post from our visit to the fortified church of Viscri ( and area so beautiful, Prince Charles owns a home there!) ~ Shelley Hartman, Europe + Romania Wedding + Travel Photographer

To see more of our wanderings, check out the travel page on my blog. Thanks for looking!