St Michael's Fortified Church, Cisnădioara

The church stands on the rocky summit of St Michael's Hill, on the southern edge of the village of Cisnădioara (German: Michelsberg), part of the town of Cisnădie, about 10 km from Sibiu. The church gave its name to the hill (Mons Sancti Michaelis) and the German name to the village. A deed of gift of 1223 is the earliest record of the place: „St Michael's mountain, with the church and the land belonging to it”, held by the Provostry of Sibiu, passed by exchange to King Andrew II, who gave it to Magister Gocelinus, who in turn gave it to the Cistercian abbey of Cârța. Excavations have found traces of a La Tène settlement on the same hill. The church is a short three-aisled basilica with a square choir, a semicircular apse and two small apses at the end of the side aisles. The two towers planned at the west end were never finished. The taller central nave is separated from the aisles by a single pair of piers carrying round arches, has narrow windows and an open timber roof, while the aisles have barrel vaults. The west portal, from the second half of the thirteenth century, has four arches on four pairs of colonnettes with carved cushion capitals and is flanked by two blind arcades; it has been compared with the portal of the Burgundian church of Saint-Paul-de-Vaux. The choir keeps traces of painting and consecration crosses, and a carved fragment of the altar, from 1425, showing the Virgin Mary, is in the Brukenthal Museum. The thirteenth-century enclosure wall, with a wall walk and battlements, is 4-6 m high on the outside and 2-3 m on the inside; only a fragment survives of the outer tower on the east side. The courtyard holds round boulders, recorded as early as 1850, that were meant to be rolled over the walls; according to local tradition, every young man had to carry one up to the citadel before his wedding. In 1940 the tombstones of German and Austro-Hungarian officers and soldiers who fell in 1916 in the fighting around Sibiu were brought into the church from the cemetery at Gușterița. The ensemble is a class A historic monument (SB-II-a-A-12358): the Romanesque church (1176-1223), the fortified enclosure and the fragment of the east tower (thirteenth century). Unlike most churches in Transylvania, it was not remodelled over time; for a long period it stood without a roof and served the villagers as a storehouse. From Sibiu it is reached on county road 106A towards Rășinari and then 5 km on road 106D, and a path climbs from the village to the hilltop. In the centre of the village stands the Baroque Evangelical church of 1764, with an organ from 1723. On summer Sundays this church hosts the „Plimbările muzicale de la Cisnădioara” (Musical Walks of Cisnădioara) concerts.