Van Eyck
Man in a Blue Cap — Romania's most precious painting.
Dragos Dumitru — CC BY 2.0 · Popa Radu — CC BY-SA 3.0 ro · GerritR — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Asurnipal — CC BY-SA 4.0
Romania's first museum and among Europe's oldest: Baron Samuel von Brukenthal, governor of Transylvania under Maria Theresa, opened his Baroque palace on the Large Square to the public in 1817 with the collection he had assembled in Vienna — Flemish, Dutch, German and Italian paintings, a library of three hundred thousand volumes, coins and minerals. The European wing is its jewel: Van Eyck's "Man in a Blue Cap", works by Brueghel the Younger, Teniers, Lucas Cranach and Titian, hung in the original rooms with their furniture and chandeliers as the Baron left them. From the upper floor the balcony looks over the Large Square and the Council Tower. Its branches across the city — the history museum in Altemberger House, pharmacy, natural history — take separate or combined tickets, and the palace itself is the best indoor hour in Sibiu.
Man in a Blue Cap — Romania's most precious painting.
The Baron's furniture and chandeliers as they were.
Three hundred thousand Enlightenment volumes.
Piața Mare 4-5, Sibiu
The Large SquareThe city with eyes: Sibiu's Large Square is ringed by pastel Saxon houses that w1 minute walk4.9
Huet SquareA square in Sibiu's Upper Town surrounding the great Evangelical church, the old1 minute walk4.8
History Museum in Altemberger HouseThe largest Gothic civic complex in Transylvania: Altemberger House, Sibiu's old1 minute walk4.7
The Georg Daniel Teutsch MonumentA statue in Huet Square before the Evangelical Cathedral in Sibiu, to the bishop2 minutes walk4.5
The Evangelical CathedralSibiu's tallest spire: the Gothic Lutheran cathedral (fourteenth century) lifts 2 minutes walk4.8A Sibiu Saxon who became governor of Transylvania at imperial Vienna, spent his fortune on art and books and willed it all to his city — the first cultural bequest of its kind in the region.