Discover Romania. Slimnic Fortress
Sibiu is one of our favorite cities and on our last visit we discovered a place we’ve never been before, Slimnic Fortress. As we drove around Sibiu’s surroundings, we saw some ruins on top of a hill and then a sign with “Slimnic Fortress” and decided to go there. Honestly, we weren’t that impressed when we got there, we thought that it’s just an abandoned ruin because there was so much grown grass around it and it didn’t seem worth visiting. But then we saw a group of people entering and we thought we should follow them. After a strong push to the gate at the bottom of the hill, you go ahead on a small path until the fortress’ entrance. You pay a 3 lei fee and you can walk around the yard and go up the Bell Tower.
The fortress was built in 14th century and is located on the Burgbasch Hill and was meant to defend the Sibiu-Medias road. The legend says that there was an old royal palace here, but the archaeological discoveries mention an old church. Because of the Turkish invasions in the 15th century the church was never finished and the arches that were supposed to cover the walls remained at the design stage and the locals, instead of working on finishing the church fortified the walls of the fortress. Because the fortifications were never truly finished, in 1529 the citadel was conquered by Ioan Zapolya’s army and a lot of people were impaled.
On the outside yard there’s a “reconciliation room” where couples who wanted to divorce stayed there until they made up. All the way here, the traveling father told us stories about how bacon was smoked in Slimnic. We found out that there’s some truth in this, because during summer people stored their bacon and other meats here in a tower called “The Bacon Tower”.
We also went inside the Tower Bell and climbed some very old and abrupt wooden stairs. They were so abrupt that we were afraid that we will slip on our way down, We admired the old bell and the view with the green hills that surround the fortress. Next time you go to Sibiu you should also check out Slimnic Fortress, it’s interesting enough and won’t take much of your time.
