The Citadel of Brasov, Romania dating from the 14th Century
Although Brasov is a thriving commercial city, it still retains a feeling of a town in the middle ages where princes, peasants, guilds and farmers worked and worshipped as a community. It was Holy Friday when we arrived and we could not enter the Black Church, as it was closed for Easter preparations. We made our usual photographic pilgrimages up the steep sided hills flanking the town to get bird-eye viewpoints for our landscapes. I tried to emphasize the red-tiled roofs and the three towers and the massive Black Church.
Originally, the church was Roman Catholic but has been Lutheran since the 16th century. Services are held today, attended by the last of the German community in Brasov. Daniel told me that most German families (they had come at the behest of a Hungarian Prince, as craftsmen and soldiers for the crown in the 13th and 14th centuries) returned to Germany after the fall of communism thanks to the repatriation of ethnic Germans by West Germany.
Evidence of their culture remains in the fairy tale architecture still providing shelter for today’s citizens of Brasov. I did note some elderly, Germanic appearing, matrons on the street. They dressed sedately in black with a Homberg-like hat pushed tightly onto their forehead. I got the feeling that if they wore anything less formal they would feel as if they were letting the side down.
Tall, Willowy and Beautiful