Viscri is the village people picture when they think of Transylvania's Saxon heritage, and it more or less lives up to it. A single long street of pastel houses, blue, ochre and white, stands gable end to the road, with geese in the ditch, horse carts at dusk and, at the top of the slope, a fortified church wrapped in thick white walls. It is part of the Villages with Fortified Churches in Transylvania listed by UNESCO, and it is one of the best preserved.
The Transylvanian Saxons, German-speaking settlers invited by Hungarian kings in the Middle Ages, built these church fortresses to survive raids from the Ottomans and Tatars. Each family had its own storeroom inside the walls, where bacon, grain and valuables were kept, and when danger came the whole village retreated behind them. Climb the tower and you can see the wooden galleries and the views across rolling pasture and woodland. After 1990 most Saxons emigrated to Germany, and the villages emptied. Viscri's revival owes a lot to conservation groups and to King Charles III, who bought and restored a house here and has long championed the place.
Today you can buy knitted woollen socks and felt slippers from village women, sometimes straight from a doorstep, and the home-cooked meals in guest houses lean towards soups, smoked meats and fruit preserves.
The village lies a few kilometres off the main road between Sighișoara and Brașov, reached on a side road from Bunești. Ride it slowly. The point here is to arrive gently: cows walk home on their own in the evening and know they have right of way. The surrounding hills are gentle, mostly grazing land and oak woods, and the main road nearby carries heavy truck traffic, so the side roads through the Saxon villages, Saschiz, Biertan and others, make a better way to link the area. Some of those lanes are rough, so check the surface before committing a heavy bike.
Rupea, about ten kilometres away, is the nearest town, with fuel and shops and its own hilltop fortress worth a look. Arrive in the late afternoon, when the light warms the house fronts and the street smells of hay and woodsmoke.