The view from the road
The citadel on its rock above an open plain.
Diana Popescu ā CC BY-SA 3.0 ro Ā· Mihaiadam 123 ā CC BY-SA 4.0 Ā· Anca M. Vasilache ā CC BY-SA 4.0 Ā· Anca M. Vasilache ā CC BY-SA 4.0
The most distinctive thing the Saxons left, and seven of them are on the World Heritage list. The idea is that a small village cannot wall itself entirely, so the church at its centre is fortified instead: walls, towers, and storerooms built into them ā in many, a room per family holding smoked meat and grain. When an Ottoman or Tatar raid came, the whole village went inside with its livestock, shut the gate and held out for weeks. About three hundred were built and more than a hundred and fifty still stand. The closest to BraČov are at HÄrman, Prejmer and Viscri, and Prejmer is the best known.
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Rupea Citadel stands on the summit of a single basalt rock rising out of an open Transylvanian plain, on the main road between BraČov and SighiČoara ā and the sight of it from the road is reason enough to stop. The site has been occupied since prehistory and the Dacians fortified it, but the present citadel is medieval: built from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century in three successive rings following the shape of the rock ā an upper, a middle and a lower fortress, with a winding passage climbing between them. This is not a nobleman's castle but a **refuge fort**: the Saxon peasants of the surrounding villages built it to shelter their families and livestock during raids, and each family had a storeroom. It was completely restored between 2011 and 2013 after centuries of neglect, and the result is clean and legible ā perhaps rather cleaner than it should be. The view from the top runs across the whole plain. **About 53 km north of BraČov**, and combined with SighiČoara in one day.
The citadel on its rock above an open plain.
Climbing between the three successive forts.
Rupea, on the BraČov-SighiČoara road