Ninety seconds on the Alba Carolina Citadel
Plan the walls and the museums as two separate visits. The walls are free and open at every hour, but almost everything inside them is ticketed and shuts at six, so an evening arrival gets you the fortress with every door locked.
Allow four to six hours, most of it inside the walls. The walk around the defences is free at any hour.
The ticketed sights are spread across the interior and keep their own hours: the hall where the union of Transylvania with Romania was signed in 1918, two cathedrals and a set of museums.
From May to September the guard ceremony at noon draws a crowd. Time your walk around it.
Alba Iulia, and further afield
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Two levels make up the old Saxon town: an upper town of three squares and guild houses, and a lower town of workshops and lanes, joined by…