Sibiu is one of the most well known tourist cities in Romania due to its well preserved medieval old town. We have visited it before most individually and together but we wanted to see it again to see how much it changed, and it is also a great meeting point between our two families. The hotel is an improvement from last time with a good breakfast even though the stairs to the “ground level” we booked intentionally are not helping with our more mobility challenged relatives.
While the hotel is really close to the downtown area there is a better access so we drive there with the car. From this parking lot the access the the Central Square is via a more level road instead of climbing and possibly a few stairs from the hotel.
The road to the big square from the the parking lot is quite scenic with some of the best architecture Sibiu is offering. It is also a pedestrian street which is really a bonus as you don’t have to dodge cars while window shopping.
And we do a lot of window shopping as well as checking the restaurants for potentially visiting them later in the day for lunch. And some window shopping actually does transform into actual shopping as we make slowly our way towards the square.
The buildings here are well renovated and colorful and we admire them in a very touristy way (photos, oohing and aahing) as we pass them.
Most houses here have a store at the ground level and apartments above it, we always wonder if the people who work in the shop also live upstairs, or ever did?
We arrive relatively early in the morning in the Central Square, there are not that many tourists as later in the day but it is also quite cold. The plaza is the centerpoint of historic Sibiu and painstakingly renovated, it looks quite beautiful.
Some of the major attractions here are the Catholic Church and the Bruckentahl Museum as well as the many historic houses. We hope the Visitor Center is also well stocked but to our surprise it is almost impossible to even get a map of the city, this is quite a contrast versus the Information Center in Cluj which is well stocked with many different maps and brochures.
We explore the plaza carefully looking at the details of the buildings, especially interesting is a building with eyes on tops and painted lions on the walls.
We really do like pigeons and they really like this plaza with free water and food so we spend some time just observing them as they get fed until they likely cannot even fly away. There are lots of pigeons here and of multiple colors, a real pigeonwatcher paradise.
Next we enter the Catholic Church, it is quite richly decorated and it is worth visiting it especially as it is free to enter.
The stained glass windows are beautiful and there are many other details you can observe while visiting. We spend a bit of time just making a tour of the interior and looking at the artwork and decorations.
After this we are cold and a bit tired so we choose a cafe in the Big Square to refresh ourselves. The sweets are quite good and the hot coffee hits the spot and soon we are reenergized and ready to go.
Our relatives decide to wait in the square so we are trying to explore the area relatively fast so we don’t miss too much time with them. First we walk to the nearby Evangelical Church. It looks beautiful from outside but because it costs to enter we decide against it and continue our exploration.
Close to the Big Square is the Small Square. This is another square with some beautifully restored houses and we do a tour of the plaza to ensure we admire all individual buildings.
One of the most famous sights in Sibiu is the Bridge of Lies. it is supposed to break when you tell a lie so it is a good place to ask important questions of your partners and friends. Of course after ensuring they believe the legend..which you should do, why not? No lies were told during our visit and we enjoyed the great views from the bridge, you can see that as you move away from the downtown area not all buildings are that well restored but that makes it somehow more authentic.
We take the Goldsmith Alley down from the Small Square, at this point we made a decision to try to reach our hotel and explore the area up to the hotel also as it is less touristy. Goldsmith Alley for certain seems quite scenic and should be a major attractions in our opinion as it descends towards the Goldsmith Plaza.
A relatively small plaza, Goldsmith Plaza is certainly worth a visit. While there are very few stores and only one restaurant it has a rustic beauty that really made us pass through it as much as possible.
From here we follow the small streets with cars parked on the sidewalk and other cars passing us quite dangerously towards the hotel. This whole area feels like we stepped back in time, with the many-colored houses from centuries past lining the street.
We return on a slightly different route that brings us directly under the Bridge of Lies, now we have to hope that no one lies what we are right below it.
After reuniting with our relatives we explore the shops a bit more and then the preserved wall section. It is quite impressive and there are even a few towers that were preserved along the route.
At one end of the preserved section is the Philarmonic building which makes for a natural turn around point. On return we go along the wall passing multiple wall entrances along the way, it feels like we really are in a walled city for a while.
The path itself has been refashioned into a Walk of Fame with multiple stars with famous Romanian artists set in the path. We are more excited when we find a spectacle of nature with multiple red bugs swarming a tree, looks cool but scary.
After all this walking we are quite tired and hungry so we sit at an outside restaurant and order a few traditional Romanian dishes. They are reasonably good and we enjoy resting for a bit before continuing on.
We continue exploring the central area up and down and start to learn all the secrets and shortcuts that make for a faster route through the downtown area.
But no matter what we are always attracted and have to return to the Goldsmith Alley, our preferred route from our hotel’s area to the central square.
As the dark is setting in it is becoming also more cold but also with the golden hour in full swing it is time to take some good photos of the downtown buildings.
We return on another route that brings us past the history museum which is in a fortified house and past another section of wall near the Stairs Passage. It is quite busy here when we pass as the high school just finished classes and a lot of kids are running around down the stairs.
Returning on the new route we pass another tower, this one is not maintained and not really touristy. It is quite weird to see it between the houses and you cannot approach it as it is fenced in.
In the evening our ride towards Bucharest, another of our relatives, is supposed to arrive. She arrives quite late in the day but just in time to still find the restaurant open and have a large meal all together. Weirdly when we recommend the schnitzel that we liked the previous day it is coming in a different presentation but the food is still good and full we are ready to go to sleep.
