Things to do
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Covered Staircase
A roofed wooden stair of 175 steps built in 1642 so that schoolchildren could reach the hill church in winter without the climb becoming dangerous. It is dim at midday and it is the best photograph in the town. It runs from the school up to the church and the treads are worn uneven.
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Sighișoara Citadel
The walled upper town, on the UNESCO list since 1999, with about 160 houses still occupied inside the ring. It is entered under the clock tower and crossed in ten minutes, which is not the same as seeing it. The walls are walked in sections and the hill church is reached by the covered stair.
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Sighișoara Clock Tower
The 64 metre gate tower that has kept the citadel's time since the 1300s, its figures turning on a wooden mechanism at midnight to change the day. The museum inside climbs to a gallery that looks over the whole roofscape, on wooden stairs that are steep and narrow near the top.
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Târgu Mureș Palace of Culture
A secessionist palace finished in 1913 with a hall of mirrors lit by twelve stained glass windows telling Székely ballads, a concert hall with a 4,463 pipe organ, and mosaic and majolica across the front. It is the finest interior of its period in the country.
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Breite Oak Reserve
Platoul Breite is a wood pasture on the plateau above the town, where several hundred oaks between two and eight centuries old stand wide apart in open grassland. The walk up is easy, about three kilometres each way from the edge of town, but the start of the lane is easy to miss and the path can be overgrown. Do not walk back along the main road, which has fast traffic and loose dogs.
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Casa Georgius Krauss
A patrician house of 1634 inside the citadel walls, restored around its painted beams and vaulted cellar and run as a small hotel. It is one of the few places to sleep inside the walls, and the vaulted cellar is used as the breakfast room.
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Casa Vlad Dracul
The ochre house by the clock tower where Vlad Dracul, father of Vlad the Impaler, minted coin and lived in the 1430s. The claim that the son was born in it is tradition rather than record, and the ground floor is now a restaurant.
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Church on the Hill
The gothic church at the top of the citadel, reached by the covered stair, with fresco fragments uncovered under whitewash and a crypt that is the only one in the country beneath a hill church. The Saxon cemetery around it is still in use.
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Citadel Square
Piața Cetății is the small square at the heart of the walled town, ringed by painted burgher houses and café tables. It is busiest in the middle of the day; have a coffee here in the evening, when it is quiet. Most of the citadel's lanes lead off it within a few steps.
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Monastery Church
The former Dominican church on the main square, stripped at the Reformation and now holding a collection of Anatolian rugs and Saxon funerary monuments. The bronze font of 1440 stands near the door. It is entered from the square beside the clock tower and concerts are held in it in summer.
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Saxon Cemetery
The old Saxon cemetery sits on terraces on the hillside behind the Church on the Hill, with German headstones under tall trees. From the church door, carry on uphill into the graves; it is a few steps on. It is quiet even when the square below is full, and the view over the roofs is one of the best in town.
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Tanners' Tower
One of the surviving guild towers on the north wall, square and blunt, kept by the tanners who worked down by the river because of the smell. It is the plainest of the nine and the clearest about what a guild tower was for.
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Târgu Mureș Medieval Citadel
A seven bastion citadel of 1602 around a fourteenth century Franciscan church, restored in 2018 with the guild bastions opened as exhibition rooms. It is entered free and used as a park. It stands above the main square and the church inside is still in use.
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Teleki Library
A public library opened by Sámuel Teleki in 1802 and still in its original room, holding about forty thousand volumes including a 1466 Tacitus and one of the country's Bolyai collections. It was among the first libraries in the region open to anyone.
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Tinsmiths' Tower
About 25 metres high, this is the most striking of the guild towers on the citadel wall, and the bullet marks in its stone are still visible. It is an exterior only. Use it as the turning point for a walk around the walls to find the other towers.
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Valea Verde Retreat
A set of Saxon houses restored in a valley village north west of the town, run with a kitchen garden, a truffle hunt and a restaurant that draws diners out from the city. Rooms are in separate houses along the village street, and the garden supplies most of what is served.
