Biertan is a small village in the hills of southern Transylvania, and its church looks like a castle that happens to have a nave. In the sixteenth century the Saxon community, German-speaking settlers who had been invited into the region by the Hungarian kings in the twelfth century to farm and defend the frontier, enclosed the church on its hilltop with three rings of walls, towers, covered stairways and storerooms, so that the villagers could withstand a Turkish raid. Inside the walls each family kept a room for its food and valuables, and the bacon hung in the towers. The ensemble, listed by UNESCO in 1993, is one of the best examples of the fortified churches that dot the Saxon lands, and it has the feel of a place built by people with much to protect.
The church itself is late Gothic, with a vaulted hall and a wing altar from the late fifteenth century, with painted panels in the German style. From 1572 until 1867, Biertan was the seat of the Lutheran bishops of the Saxons, which explains the grandeur of a church in so small a place. A story the guides tell concerns a small room in the walls where quarrelling couples were locked up together for two weeks with one bed, one plate and one spoon, and it is said that in three hundred years only one couple went through with divorce.
Most of the Saxons left for Germany after 1990, and the villages are now quiet, with colourful houses in a row and storks nesting on the chimneys. The country around Biertan is a landscape of gentle hills, vineyards and orchards, known for its white wines of the Târnave region, and the lanes between the villages are some of the sweetest riding in Romania. Roads are narrow, and the surface can be rough, with potholes, horse carts and herds of sheep to watch for. Spring brings green hills and blossom, and September is the harvest.
Fuel is not in the village itself. Șaeș and Apold are small, so the dependable places are Sighișoara, the walled medieval town to the north-east, and Mediaș, to the west, both a short ride away. For a meal, look for ciorbă, a sour soup, and mămăligă with cheese.
Climb the covered stairway to the walls and look out over the red roofs. It is a view that has not changed much in five hundred years.