Nagyszeben

Old city

Cathedral

NAGYSZEBEN (Sibiu, Rumania today) has the signs of human habitat of the Stone Age. In the Ancient Age, during the Roman Empire, a colony called Cedonia was here. After the Hungarian Conquest of Transylvania in 896, Nagyszeben became a Hungarian village. In the 11th century, Hungarian king Géza II (1141-1162) of the House of Árpád settled Saxons from Germany here to guard the Vöröstorony pass. These settlers came from the regions around the river Rhine. Later, in the 16th century, during the Protestant movement, large numbers of Hungarians fled the area, and their places were further replaced by Germans from Upper-Austria, Carinthia, Salzburg, and Baden.
As early as 1191, the town became the Saxon Archdiocese, and as a result of the letter of autonomy, issued in 1224, by Hungarian king András II (1205-1235), Nagyszeben quickly became the political and cultural center of the Saxons in Transylvania. The town developed quickly, and by the 14th century, Nagyszeben had the strongest fortress in Transylvania. When they built the third defense wall system around the town, Nagyszeben became a fort impossible to take. Turkish troops repeatedly besieged the town, in 1432, in 1438 and in 1442, but they never could take it.
The town even resisted Hungarian king János Szapolyai (1526-1540) when the Saxons did not want to accept Szapolyai's authority over Nagyszeben. During this period, the defense system of Nagyszeben counted not less than 40 towers, and mostly due to its power, it always remained the economic and cultural capital of the Saxons in Transylvania.
The gothic cathedral was built between 1431-1520. It has 3 aisles, a cross-nave section and a 70-meter-high tower. The statue, standing in front of the cathedral, depicts G. D. Teutch (1817-1893), the Evangelical bishop for the Saxons in Transylvania.
In 1682, the Jesuit monks opened a Hungarian grammar school, and in 1770, Maria Theresa, the Habsburg queen reigning Hungary, built an orphanage in Nagyszeben, operated buy catholic nuns. In 1864, countess Julianna Batthyány established the Clarissan Order's educational institution, which had a day care, elementary, secondary and vocational school. Only between 1939-40, 800 Hungarian girls were educated here.