Covered Stairs, Sighișoara

The Covered Stairs are inside Sighișoara Citadel and start from School Street, climbing School Hill, the upper terrace of the citadel. At the top stand the Evangelical Church on the Hill, dedicated to St Nicholas, the School on the Hill (today the Josef Haltrich High School) and the Evangelical cemetery. The German name, Schülertreppe ("Scholars' Stairs"), shows that the stairway was the pupils' route to the school on the hill. The stairway, built in 1642, now has 176 steps and a wooden roof; it originally had about 300 steps. It was built so that pupils and churchgoers could reach the school and the church in winter too, when snow made the climb difficult. The school beside the Church on the Hill, the schola maioris, opened in 1607-1608, and in 1619 mayor Martin Eisenburger ordered a new building next to the existing one. The stairway is listed as a historic monument under the name "Wooden stairway, covered" (LMI code MS-II-m-A-15978) and is part of the Historic Centre of Sighișoara, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1999. It is the footpath between School Street and the Church on the Hill.