The tale of Sibiu

Sibiu is the Romanian name, it has had many names depending on who had control. (German: Hermannstadt, Transylvanian Saxon: Härmeschtat,  Hungarian: Nagyszeben). It is a city in Transylvania, Romania, with a population of 170 000. Located 275 km north-west of Bucharest,the city straddles the Cibin River, a tributary of the river Olt. Now the capital of Sibiu County, between 1692 and 1791 and 1849–65 Sibiu was also the capital of the Principality of Transylvania.
Sibiu is one of the most important cultural centres of Romania and was designated the European Capital of Culture for the year 2007, and Gastronomical Capital in 2019. Steve can appreciate this year's award!!!

Sibiu was initially a Daco-Roman city. The town was refounded by the Saxons (German) settlers brought there by the king Géza II of Hungary. The first reference to the area was in 1191 when Pope Celestine III confirmed the existence of the free status of the Saxons in Transylvania, having its headquarters in Sibiu.

In the 14th century, it was already an important trade centre. In 1376, the craftsmen were divided in 19 guilds. Sibiu became the most important ethnic German city among the seven cities that gave Transylvania its German name Siebenbürgen (literally seven citadels). It was home to the Universitas Saxorum (Community of the Saxons), a network of pedagogues, ministers, intellectuals, city officials, and councilmen of the German community forging an ordered legal corpus and political system in Transylvania since the 1400s. In 1699, after the Ottomans withdrew to his base of power in Hungary and Transylvania, the town became capital of Principality of Transylvania (since 1570 the principality was mostly under sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire, however often had a dual vassalage). During the 18th and 19th centuries, the city became the second- and later the first-most important centre of Transylvanian Romanian ethnics. The first Romanian-owned bank had its headquarters here (The Albina Bank), as did the ASTRA (Transylvanian Association for Romanian Literature and Romanian's People Culture). After the Romanian Orthodox Church was granted status in the Austrian Empirefrom the 1860s onwards, Sibiu became the Metropolitan seat, and the city is still regarded as the third-most important centre of the Romanian Orthodox Church. Between the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 and 1867, Sibiu was the meeting-place of the Transylvanian Diet, (The diet decided on juridical, military and economic matters), which had taken its most representative form after the Empire agreed to extend voting rights in the region.

After World War I, when Austria-Hungary was dissolved, Sibiu became part of Romania; the majority of its population was still ethnic German (until 1941) and counted a large Romanian community, as well as a smaller Hungarian one. Starting from the 1950s and until after 1990, most of the city's ethnic Germans emigrated back to Germany and Austria but they still keep economic ties to the areas they came from, helping and rebuilding. Roughly 2,000 have remainedRead more