Near the edge of the town in the middle of flowering fields stands ‘Transylvania’s most beautiful ruin’ (quoting the town’s own 800 year celebration advertising). In 1202 the Cistercians founded the order’s most easterly monastery in Europe here. The nave has collapsed, but the choir is still used today by the Protestant church for their church services. The monastery did not last as a monastery for long. Several times it was destroyed by the Turks and rebuilt, but under the Viennese Abbot Bärenfuß (‘Bear’s foot’) moral standards became very lax and in 1474 King Matthew Corvinus dissolved the monastery and handed it over to the church in Hermannstadt (Sibiu).

Images offered by: Thaler Tamás
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