Lutheran Cathedral of Saint Mary

The Lutheran cathedral is the building Sibiu’s skyline is organised around. It stands on Huet Square, the third and quietest of the old town’s linked squares, and its steeple rises 73 metres — the tallest church tower in Transylvania.

It is Gothic, it is large, and it is a Lutheran cathedral in a country that is overwhelmingly Orthodox, which is the shortest way to explain who built this town. Sibiu was Hermannstadt, the principal city of the Transylvanian Saxons, and the Reformation arrived here in the 16th century and stayed.

Getting your bearings

If you can see the steeple you can find the old town, which matters more than it sounds in a place with three squares on three levels connected by stairs and passages. When the tower is open to climb, it gives the view that makes sense of the whole layout — the Great Square, the Little Square below it, and the roofs with the eye-shaped dormer windows that Sibiu is photographed for.