Brukenthal National Museum

This is the first ever bastion built in Sibiu and one of the oldest of Transylvania, its construction being started in 1551 by the Habsburg military commander Castaldo, based on the layouts of architect Alessandro Clippa, during the Mayorship of Petru Haller. The bastion was supposed to provide security for the road coming from Brașov as well as for the South-Eastern corner of the citadel. Haller Bastion is made of brick and filled with soil, having walls with a total length of 223 m and a maximum height of 9 m. Its shape is similar to the ace of spades. For a better defence, the walls are provided at approx. 1 m from the upper limit with spacers made of rock that would prevent the installation of siege ladders. The openings of the blockhouses for the cannons are preserved to this day, both towards the Thick Tower (two), as well as towards Manejului Street (three). The “eyes” camouflaging the blockhouses that used to provide fire cover of the bastion flanks are noticeable. The Bastion stood against the sieges of Sibiu during 1602-1603, 1658, 1704, but most of all against the one from 1660 led by Gheorgy Rackoczy the 2nd. In 1771, since it was no longer necessary for the protection of the citadel, Haller Bastion was used by the Austrian army, the owner of the land, as equestrianism school. The school was active until 1911, when the Public Financial Administration took over the bastion and opened a midwives school which subsequently became a maternity hospital.

The Thick Tower, located on Cetății Street and on Corneliu Coposu Avenue, is a massive construction on a semicircle U-shaped layout, protruding approx. 25 meters outside the exterior wall. The walls are made of brick, with stones at the base, having a platform on which the cannons used to be placed. The tower was built around the year 1540 by Markus Pempfflinger, the royal judge of Sibiu, and it was part of the fortifications subsequently included into the city’s defensive belt. On the inside there used to be blockhouses provided with fire holes. Two brick ducts have also been discovered, one thought to have served for water drainage from the exterior ditch and the other one for the communication between the defence soldiers standing on each side of the tower. At the initiative of Martin Hochmeister, typographer and initiator of the first bookshop of Romania, who became the mayor of Sibiu, a hall was included into the massive Thick Tower in 1787 – the Thalia Hall, where the first Romanian theatre was established and one of the few existing in Europe. The style of the hall was rococo and it used to have two balconies and one box reserved exclusively for the Governor of Transylvania. After it burnt during a fire, in 1826, the theatre building was rebuilt in a Viennese style. Romanian theatre troupes conducted by Mihail Pascaly, Tardini-Vlădicescu and Matei Millo have performed on the stage of this theatre. Later on, many personalities of the Romanian culture have performed on the stage of Sibiu theatre, among them the famous composer George Enescu. The theatre activated continuously in this hall until 1949, when another devastating fire took place. During 1990-2004, the County Council of Sibiu rebuilt the Thalia Hall, at the same time changing its purpose. Today, the Thalia Hall hosts the State Philharmonic of Sibiu.

Inaugurated in 2007, within “Friedrich Teutsch” Culture and Dialogue Centre, the A.C. Evangelic Church Museum of Romania presents a panorama of the Augustan Confession (Lutheran) Evangelic Church history in Romania, as well as a of the community and religious life of the Transylvanian Saxons. Located on the 1st floor of Teutsch House, on a surface of approximately 400 sm, the permanent exhibition is structured in chronological and thematic sections as follows: - Arrival of German colonists in Transylvania; - Fortified churches of the Transylvanian Saxons; - Lutheran Protestant reform; - Community life joined by the church; - Church and school, priests and masters; - Sacral art; - From counter-reforms to the watershed of the millennia. The exhibition ends with a glimpse to the future from the perspective of the situation occurred after 1990: the Church in diaspora. The treasury of the museum included works of the most famous goldsmiths of Transylvania. A particular attraction is the special collection of dolls dressed in festive Transylvanian Saxon costumes that differ according to geographical region and wearer’s age.

"Emil Sigerus” Saxons Folk Art and Ethnography Museum is one of the units of "ASTRA" National Museum Compound, founded in 1997, along with the opening of the fundamental exhibition “Transylvanian Tiles. 15th – 19th centuries.”, with the purpose of preserving and promoting the material and immaterial patrimony belonging to the Transylvanian Saxons minority. "Emil Sigerus" Saxons Folk Art and Ethnography Museum took over the ethnographic patrimony owned by the Carpathian Museum (1895-1920). An important role in the improvement of the museum patrimony was that of collector Emil Sigerus, who donated over 500 valuable items, including textiles, painted furniture, glass, tin, silverware, but especially Transylvanian ceramics. The patrimony of "Emil Sigerus" Museum currently has over 8.900 pieces, structured in three collections: ceramics, costumes – textiles – embroideries and painted furniture. Since 2007, the headquarters of the museum operates inside the House of Arts, rehabilitated historic monument, documented mention in 1370.

The Museum of Hunting is named after one of the important personalities of the city of Sibiu in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries: Colonel August von Spiess, the Keeper of the Royal Hunting under the King Ferdinand I of Romania.   The Museum opened as the first of its profile on the national level, in the year 1966, being accommodated in the Von Spiess residence, donated on this porpoise by the Colonel’s daughters.   The collection comprises about 1600 items.  The Museum courtyard in the back of the building was arranged to serve as a relaxation open space for the visitors and a proper environment for ecological education of children as it hosts many species of plants, a dog, fishes and a tortoise. 

The Pharmacy History Museum was opened for visitation in 1972, its foundation being based on the long history of the pharmacy in Sibiu, because the first pharmacy on the Romanian territory was documented here (1494). The building of the museum is located in the Small Square at no. 26, representing an architectural historic monument that contains gothic and renaissance elements, dating since 1568. This building housed one of the oldest pharmacies of Sibiu, La Ursul Negru (At the Black Bear), founded around the year 1600. The collections of the museum include over 6.600 pieces that present the evolution of medication and pharmaceutical techniques over the years. The sectors with exhibits of the museum are divided as follows: Dispensary – the traditional component of a pharmacy, where the medicinal products are displayed. The furniture of the room was manufactured in Vienna in 1902 and it belonged to the old pharmacy La Vulturul Negru (At the Black Eagle) of Sibiu. Laboratory – where the following are displayed: medical balances, brass, cast iron and marble mortars, crushing and pulverizing machines, pieces for tablets and suppositories, percolators for medicinal plants tinctures, ceramic and metallic containers, melting pots, measuring tin cups, sieves, filters and laboratory glassware. The Collection of Homeopathy exemplifies the homeopathic therapy tradition in Sibiu, Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of the therapeutic doctrine, lived and was active in Sibiu between 1777 and 1779, as physician and secretary of Baron Samuel von Brukenthal, Governor of Transylvania.  The Collection includes over 2.900 pieces, namely kits and bottles of homeopathic recipes, which were taken over from the former apothecary La Înger (At the Angel) in Sibiu.

In front of the Southern gate of the Evangelical Church there is the statues of Bishop Georg Daniel Teutsch (1817-1893), sculpted in brass in 1899 by Adolf von Donndorf. G. D. Teutsch was a bishop and historian, honorary member of ASTRA Association. The monument depicts him standing, in his sacerdotal habiliment, holding the Bible in his left hand and with his right hand leaning on a small column on which there are documents symbolizing the medieval rights enjoyed by the Saxons.

The only element that survived from the first defensive belt of the old citadel is the Stairs Tower, one of the few Roman constructions of Sibiu. This one is dating since the 13th century, the current shape being due to the modifications of 1542. The tower is shaped like a massive one-story brick construction, having at the first level an arched gangway that reaches the stairs which are connecting the Upper Town and the Lower Town towards Turnului Street, and on the side there is an arched gangway towards Redemption Corner (Busswinkel) below the curved wall that surrounds the garden of the parochial house. Right below the Stairs Tower, though a patio you can reach the yard of the Asylum Church, where allegedly existed an older building made of stone which was mentioned in a document of the year 1292 as being a hospital. It is the oldest document confirmation of a hospital in Romania. Below the arch of the Tower we go inside the Stairs Gangway (13th century), consisting of two stair lines and arcades – being one of the representative images of medieval Sibiu, as it is the exit gate towards the Lower City.

The House with Caryatides, also known as the Little Palace, is located on Mitropoliei Street, at no. 13 and it belongs to the late baroque of Sibiu. The new building, built by the widow of Count Gregorius Bethlen after the year 1786, was placed on the location of an older one, famous for the fact that it was inhabited by the renowned silversmith Sebastian Hann. Its representative item is a truly spectacular decorative element, from which it actually took its name: the framed gateway on two caryatides, each placed on a high die, that support an open balcony.