Welcome to Făgăraş in County Braşov,
part of the Transilvania region of Romania! Discover historic Sibiu and
surrounding villages, see things to do and understand the rich Transilvania
culture unfolding in historic county Braşov. Rest Romania will help
you find the perfect hotel or B&B in our section on Făgăraş lodging, B&B
(bed and breakfast), or great activities further out in County Braşov.
Check
out your transportation options in Făgăraş in County Braşov, part of
the region of Transilvania in Romania. Find your accommodation options in
either Făgăraş or Sibiu, with fun things to do from eoc-tourism, to
nearby hiking and even skiing.
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Fabulous Făgăraş keeps you
guessing with surprises in all directions. Saxon citadels to
the north, stunning mountains the south, verdant river valleys to
the west and fabulous little villages with great accommodation to
the east.
This is also one region that driving through can be difficult, so
alluring and beautiful the views to jagged peaks of
the Făgăraş mountains are to the south!
With a population of over 35,000, the township
Fărăgaş was a key location throughout the history of
Transilvania, sited as it is in the wide alluvial
Olt River valley,
rich with agricultural fields and on a key trade route.
The Faithful of Făgăraş
Dotted throughout the wide valley are fine villages with
churches and monasteries like the famous
Brâncoveanu Monastery,
long a stalwart of Orthodox faith through Calvinist, Catholic and Uniate
influences which swept through the wide valley over the centuries.
Although the town of Făgăraş has become almost totally
Romanian-populated through Saxon and Hungarian emigration, the diverse
background is still obvious. In town, see the
Reformed Church and
the Franciscan Monastery and
Roman Catholic Church complex for an insight into the non-Othodox views
of Christianity in the area through time.
The Strength of Făgăraş
The Fortress of
Făgăraş was yet another castle which felt the wrath of the de
facto Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, as he raged through the Olt River
Valley on his campaign to the Lower Bârsa Land
beyond the Perşani
mountains. The Museum of
the Făgăraş Land is a worthwhile stopping off point for your time in
the Făgăraş area too, with some brilliant
glass-painted icons (more can be seen at the
Brâncoveanu Museum
at Sâmbata de Sus)
Near it All
Făgăraş is a good stopping-off point which
positions you well for the mountains to the
south and the Saxon churches to the north. With some
reasonably well-priced accommodation, Făgăraş is
centrally located in the Olt River
Valley.
Just 20 minutes down the road to Sibiu, Victoria is one of
Romania's newest towns, a fabrication of communist zeal and ideal,
erected in 1948.
Not at all like the much older and historically rich communities
around it, Victoria sports a vaguely modernist feel.
The Fortress of Făgăraş
A nicely imposing facade with five large towers,
3 levels and some great Italianate loggias built during a
Renaissance resurgence.
Bethlen was popular with the ethnic
Romanian population of Făgăraş for fighting against the Habsburg
overlords, albeit at the expense of siding with the Ottoman empire.
The Protestant Church in Făgăraş
The preferred Romanian word is "Evangelical",
although to Americans at least, this has an inaccurate meaning, with
Evangelical meaning Protestant, rather than the style and dogma of
preaching and proselytisinsg.
Here in the main
Făgăraş Protestant
church,
don't miss the Bible printed in German in 1544, great old organ and
three local craft guild funerary monuments
Făgăraş Fortress and Castle were wholly built in brick. At present, the
castle has 80 rooms, and the fortress is still surrounded by a moat which
is deep and wide.
At times of war or social unrest in the area, the moat
could easily fill with water from a mountain brook nearby, whose course
had been specially deviated to this purpose. The citadel was ranked among
the strongest in Transilvania, standing in the way of Turkish and Tartar
invasions.
Its massive walls, towers and tall roofs are arranged in the
shape of a trapezium with four corners provided with four large bastions.
Access is made through a bridge over the defence moat.
At the centre of
the citadel stands the castle. The three levels are bounded by the Red
Tower, the Black Tower, the Prison Tower, Tomori Tower and the Motley Tower.
The exterior wall
of the castle was erected in the first half of the 15th century. The
castle was first mentioned in 1455, when Transilvania's prince, Iancu de
Hunedoara, appointed two lords to administer it.
The Făgăraş Fortress belongs to the western system of
fortifications used in the 15th century, and brought along to Transilvania
as early as the 14th century. In 1539, Transilvania's prince Stephen Mailath partially rebuilt the fortress.
Gaspar Bekes built the moat, strengthened the earthen exterior walls
and resumed works in the northern wing of the castle. Stephen and Balthazar Bathóry
together finished the second level
of the northern wing, the third level of the southern wing and the loggia
on the south side.
It was Gabriel Bethlen in the early 1600s who brought along
major architectural changes, building Italianate bastions and casemates,
reshaping the southern loggia in the
Renaissance style.
He turned the edifice into a fortified castle, with
much the same its present-day aspect. Strongly influenced by the Italian
Renaissance, Bethlen brought along architects and glass-makers from Italy,
bestowing elegance and beauty to a construction formerly designed for
merely military and utilitarian purposes.
For a year (1599-1600), Făgăraş
Fortress was the residence home of Michael the Brave's family his wife,
lady Stanca and their children.
Under subsequent Austrian-Hungarian rule, Michael Apáfi
held Diets at Făgăraş fortress, and after 1699, the fortress fell under Hapsburg
rule. Functional as a castle under Maria Theresa's reign (1740-1780), by the end
of the 18th century, it was turned into military headquarters and
barracks. The only changes that were made by that time were of a strictly
military or utilitarian nature.
In 1948, the Făgăraş Fortress was taken
over by the communists and became a dreadful political prison.
As the castle and its fortress had fallen into disrepair since it's
last military use in the early 1900s, restoration
works were carried out between 1965-1977.
Since 1954, the Fortress of Făgăraş has
housed the Museum of Făgăraş, comprising of an archaelogy section,
which shows the evolution of the Făgăraş region, along with sections on history,
which display Roman artefacts and a collection of medieval weapons,
ethnographic sections, which focus on artistic and folk crafts in the area.
The museum hosts also a beautiful collection of glass painted icons made
by Ioan Pop, Savu Moga, Matei Simfonea alonside recent ones, made by
archimandrite Timotei Tohaneanu from Sambata de Sus monastery.
Open Daily Except Mondays 9am - 4pm, closes at 3pm on
weekends
Saint Nicholas Orthodox Church was founded by the Wallachian prince
Constantin Brancoveanu together with his wife Maria. Despite its modest
appearance, the church has a particular artistic value, being the town's
oldest religious monument.
The church was inspired from the chapel of Brancoveanu's palace at Mogosoaia (near Bucharest), and served as a model,
in its turn, for another twenty churches in Transilvania.The nave and the
altar preserve the original painting made by Preda from Campulung (Brancovan
style similar to Hurez Monastery in Wallachia).
Beyond their intrinsic
value, Preda's paintings are of a special importance, as they point to the
spread of the Brancovan painting style in the whole of Transilvania. They
also mark the birth of a community of Romanian masters whose art could not
be annihilated either by the Hapsburg oppression or by the severe
interdictions imposed on the Orthodox Romanians in Transilvania.
The Church Layout
Of a
rectangular plan, with its belfry over the narthex, the church has on its
western side a porch with archways and octangular girdles made of brick
which resemble the solid churches built under the rule of Matei Basarab in
Wallachia. The iconostasis, richly decorated, is typical of the Brancovan
style of art.
The entrance door to the narthex is beautifully carved,
revealing a balanced sense of composition and proportions. The "pisania"
with Wallachia's coat of arms is placed above it. In 1721, the church
became the Cathedral of the Romanian Bishopric United with Rome
(Greek-Catholic) by papal decree.
The Orthodox Church dedicated to the Holy Trinity has mural paintings
from 1791-1797.
The Evangelical Church in its present form was built between 1842-1843,
on the foundation of former constructions demolished because of repeated
fires.
The church features a valuable Bible printed in German in 1544.
Other assets inside the church are an organ and three funerary monuments
placed at the entrance in the 19th century; they bear the trademark of the
tanners' and of the potters' guilds, as Făgăraş was renowned for its
crafts since the Middle Ages.
Building of the Roman Catholic church and the Franciscan Monastery
complex were first finished in 1737, but fell prey (as was too often the
case) to a great town fire in 1760. Most of the town was
lost, but following well-worn tradition, the the church was rebuilt and restored
in a fairly grand fashion beginning in 1761.
The new building went up in the prevailing rococo style,
much to it's credit and today adds a very interesting feature to the
architectural landscape of the Făgăraş township. In 1895 an Angster
organ was imported from Germany and became the highlight of church life.
With 18 registers and a vibrant sound not heard before by the townsfolk,
the organ was an instant hit.
Other Făgăraş Township
Sites
The Reformed Church
This fine old church, built from 1712 to 1715, has a carved pulpit whose compositions,
based on vegetal motifs, blend the baroque and the oriental styles of art
with the Transilvanian one.
The Klein House
Ioan Inocentiu Micu Klein's House was built in Transilvanian
Renaissance style in 1727. Micu Klein, a salient representative of the
Romanian Enlightenment, was the initiator of the Romanians' political
struggle for equal rights in Transilvania.
Local Statues
Lady Stanca's Statue is the work of Spiridon Georgescu and has been
placed in the park which faces the castle in 1938, on Nicolae Iorga's
initiative. The statue of Badea Cârtan's reminds the passers-by that this
one-time villager from nearby Cârta spread the Romanian language
throughout Transilvania with his teachings.
Just to the north of Făgăraş about 12km you begin to enter the real
Saxon territory, which stretches from the Sibiu margins through to the
Upper Bârsa Land.
The old Saxon church here was put up in the middle of the 15th
Century, serving Şoars and the surrounding
villages of Felmer, Bărcuţ, Seliştat and Rodbav.
As the number two town in the Olt River Valley, Victoria benefits
from a bit of elevation and is the doorstep to the delightful
Făgăraş mountains.
If you've been reading through our Romanian pages, you'll notice most
of the towns in County Braşov, and for that
matter, most of Romania, have pedigrees going back hundreds of years.
However, little Victoria, perched on the
foothills of the jagged peaks of the Făgăraş
mountains, was created by the communists in 1948!
If you have the chance to spend some time here at Sâmbata de Sus,
you're lucky! With new buildings and a thriving supportive
community, the Brâncoveanu monastery is a prime
example of modern Romanian community life.
The 40 monks and nuns currently living in the monastery maintain the
rather impressive monastery library and the adjoining museum (in the
attic of the southern buliding), both of which hold interesting
artefacts and books.
One of the highlights of this monastery is the fairly successful
blending of styles from the 17th century through to the present.
The church in the middle lending guidance to the surrounding buildings
renovated in the 1920s, 1970s, and in the 1990s after the fall of
communism.
The Brâncoveanu Monastery
The centre of the monastery complex, the
gleaming white church
The Monastery Attractions
The complex is four-sided with the two major buildings to the north
and south across two levels. On the south, the main
building has a refectory, kitchen and sleeping cells on the ground
floor, with a library and living quarters upstairs, including a parlour
for receiving guests (called a xenodochium, or "visitor house").
An Architectural Icon
The Brâncoveanu
monastery is the touchstone for the "Brâncoveanu
style" throughout Romania, in particular the columnar
arched loggias.
Go up to the attic to find the nicely presented
Brâncoveanu Museum
containing knick-knacks and bric-a-brac compiled about the monastery by
a respected elder of the church. The old glass and wood
icons in particular are worth a look, although the books and manuscripts
are perhaps best left for the scholarly types, although the decorations
on some are quite interesting.
The new conference centre is also worth a look, home to national and
international theological events, nicely done, and surprisingly well
appointed.
An
Orthodox Island through Time
Unlike it's far older Wallachian sisters over the mountains, it was
only in the late 1600s this monastery was founded, the land handed down
from the grandfather of the namesake Brâncoveanu (Constantin) in 1614, with the first wooden church built soon after
along the river Sâmbata.
Fortified with stone in 1696, the Orthodox monastery was spiritually
fortified with additional monks living on the grounds to provide a
counterweight to the prevailing Protestant (Calvinist, Evangelical)
faith of the Hungarian princes and Saxon community. Additional
pressure came from the Catholic church after the principality of
Transilvania fell under the the Habsburg crown. This led to a
hybrid form of Catholicism with Orthodox rites (the Greek-Uniate
church), sanctioned by Rome, but not accepted by conservatives in the
Orthodox fold, who became more entrenched. In the end, the
Uniate push probably ended up strengthening sentiments of Romanian
nationalism, as well as fortifying the dogma and liturgy of the Romanian
Orthodox church.
Restoration Works, 1920 - Present
Once Greater Romania was proclaimed in 1920, a new golden age dawned
with a new King and Queen. At the Brâncoveanu monastery,
restoration work began in 1926 with rebuilding of the walls, and some
more ambitious works, including larger accommodation wings, facilities
for the older monks, and a printing house.
All work was true
it's 17th century roots, with reconstruction of the belfry and it's 5
bells being the crowning achievement of the restoration works.
The bells were moved in 1997 to the newer section of the complex.
In the 1970s, the healing waters of the spring were given a canopy
of carved oak, and an alter added to accommodate open-air sermons.
As soon as the communists were out of the way in the early 1990s,
paintings were restored, walls moved to reveal some cleverly concealed
building works, and much of the more religious tone of the complex was
restored.
Looking to the south from the central Olt
River Valley, the beautiful peaks of the Făgăraş
will give 100 snapshot opportunities! Hopefully,
you'll have a digital camera with at least 256MB of memory!
Făgăraş Mountains are the highest mountains in Romania, and also the
highest mountains in the entire Southern Carpathian mountains.
Romania's
highest mountain is here, Moldoveanu at 2544m, along with brothers
Negoiu (2535m), Viştea Mare (2527 m), Lespezi (2522 m), Vânătoarea lui
Buteanu (2507 m), and Dara (2501 m). The Făgăraş
mountains are bordered in the north and west by the
Olt River Valley.
Mountaineering in the Făgăraş chains is quite
popular with Romanians, and European tourists alike. A string of
chalets, from the well-appointed
Negoiu and
Bâlea chalets to
those at Sâmbata,
Podragu,
Turnuri,
Baraciu, and more
at Pietrele,
Curmatura,
Omu, and
Babele dot the upper
reaches of the Făgăraş mountains with varying levels of comfort and
convenience. Reservations are rarely required, with capacity
keeping up with demand through 90% of the year.
Of course as with all mountain hiking activities, plenty of food,
water and safety gear is a must. See our
Hiking
Section for more information on enjoying the
Carpathians.
"I'm in love with
Transilvania. I love the way the horizon rolls, I love
how the Carpathian Alps soar like a tidal wave two thousand metres high.
I
love the sound of the words: Făgăraş(fugger-ash), Ucea(oo-chay-ah),
Braşov(brash-ov).
"I love the timeless images of rural life flashing past
the window of my train. A shepherd leans on his stick, wearing a
fleecy coat the size of a small car.
"A ramshackle wooden wagon jolts down a muddy track, lead by a prancing, skinny
black horse with blinkers and a faded rosette. Mucky kids squat in
ditches, tossing pebbles into pools.
Stout women in headscarves carry wood
or chat over a fence, tough as old boots. Wizened old men sip from small
glasses, playing chess in their rumpled black suits, white shirts and black
hats."
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If you're arriving by train, get a taxi and ask for
Piaţa Republicii, the heart of the town. It's only a 5
minute ride and won't cost much. By car, park anywhere around the
main square and have a look for accommodation if you haven't already
made arrangements.
You can pick up anything needed at the main market near the train
station before you head into the town centre, about a kilometre north
from the train station.
Busses, Maxi-Taxis and Taxis
The main highway has maxi-taxes and busses running
to Braşov, Sibiu and north to Mediaş and Sighişoara as well.
All depart from next to the train station for near-seamless connections
onwards to Victoria, Sâmbata de Sus, Ucea (which
also has it's own train stop) and Agnita.
You rarely need to wait
long for most destinations after getting off the train, as the ground
transport is ready and waiting for the arrival of the trains on most
days and times. If you don't see your maxi-taxi, ask around
if you can. If you have to wait, it's rarely more than an hour or
so, and you can cool your heals in the local market on Strada Negoiu
around the corner from the train station.
Well, the planes don't quite make it into Făgăraş, although the
airport at Sibiu is just over an hour away by the national highway
linking the two towns. If you get into Sibiu early enough (flights
from Vienna arrive around mid-day), you can bus or train to
Făgăraş from Sibiu.
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Photo: 
See a General Road Map of the Făgăraş Area
See
an Area Map of the Olt River Valley
Transportation
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