In my travel in Romania on my way to Sibiu I drove past a fortress and I said to myself, there I have to go aaaand… WOW! What an amazing find for me! The Fortress is (was) an fortified enclosure, with towers, chapel, tower tower, bastion, annexes, was built in the fourteenth century. I went into the church tower and there you have a view over all the town. But let me tell you more about this fortress!
Located on the Burgbasch hill, a hill that dominates the southern part of the locality, the fortification from Slimnic (Stolzenburg), the locality belonging to the Sibiu Chair , was meant to defend the Sibiu – Medias road . The fortress runs north-south over the entire hill. The oldest part is a Gothic chapel with a flat polygonal choir, over which rises the bell tower on three levels. To the south, a Gothic hall church was started , which was probably never completed. The south wall of the main nave and the collateral with pointed archers are preservedon two levels. The west wall, with pointed windows, has rows of small pieces, which show that the roof of the church was to be fortified. Access to the fortress was ensured through a tunnel in the northeast of the church’s corridor, leading to the south courtyard, and from here a tower connected to a “Zwinger” with a fountain. The walls are supported by slender buttresses .
The first fortification made of raw stone was built around the great Tartar invation of the early thirteenth century. These first reinforcements were replaced by much stronger walls at the beginning of the 15th century, the main building material being brick. Once erected, these walls formed two polygonal enclosures (courtyards). The two chambers are today, the south was severely damaged in the early eighteenth century curutii led by Lerenz Pekre in the service of Prince Francis II Rákóczi. The tower of the enclosure located to the north of the fortification did not have ramparts, guard roads or throwing mouths, the walls having instead an impressive thickness of about 3.5 meters.
From the original structure of the cult edifice, only the outer walls and the north wall are preserved today. Although the structure is impressive, due to the unusual plan and the high level of the choir that had provided a tunnel below that leads to the gate tower, indications of the purpose of construction as its shape and aesthetics remain unknown.
Because the fortifications were never really completed, he determined that in 1529 the fortress be conquered by the army of John Zapolya , on which occasion many locals were impaled. In the same year, with the support of Sibiu, the fortress was recaptured by the locals. In 1658, during a Turkish siege, the fortress resisted, not being conquered. On the occasion of the rebellion of the Curuts, half a century later, in 1704, the town of Slimnic was set on fire and the fortress was conquered in 1706 and remained under their control until 1707. When they left, the fortress was set on fire and the southern precinct, which started from the fountain courtyard and the parish house as well as the Gothic church, were completely destroyed. Later, an attempt was made to rebuild the enclosure, but without success, the southern enclosure never being erected again. In 1717a renovation of the walls and the church began but the works were stopped two years later due to the plague epidemic that claimed many victims.
In 1855, part of the church was demolished and a wall of the local cemetery was erected from the resulting construction material. In 1870 part of the wall towards the southern entrance of the fortress collapsed, and two years later a portion of the circular walls that protected the fountain collapsed.
Between 1958 and 1959, consolidation works were carried out at the fortress, financed by the community and the Directorate of Historical Monuments, through which the bell tower, the walls and the defense tower in the northwest were restored.
This is how the fortress looked like:
source from : wikipedia.org
Here are some pictures I took when I was there.
