One million tourists visited the 160 fortified churches in Transylvania in 2025, belonging to the Evangelical Church, of whom 600,000 were Romanians, and the rest were Germans, Austrians, Swiss, but also Americans and British, the manager of the Fortified Churches Foundation, Cristian Cismaru announced in a Tuesday's press conference.
"Our communities are getting smaller anone of the opportunities is tourism in the form of slow down, slow travel, that is, spending as much time as possible in one of the villages where we have these historical monuments. There is a tourism program of the Evangelical Church in Romania, it is called Fortivacation, that is, a vacation in a fortified enclosure. (...) In 2025 there were one million visitors, of which 60% are internal visitors, that is, Romanians who visited these churches. We are very happy that there are some attractions for them in the meantime. We hope the trend will grow", said Cismaru.
Present at the press conference, the bishop of the Evangelical Church in Romania, Reinhart Guib, explained that more and more Romanians prefer slow tourism and discovering the history of the fortress churches in Transylvania, starting in 2019, with the pandemic.
"The treasure of the Evangelical Church (...) includes almost 300 communities and locations throughout the country, in over 160 we have fortified fortresses. (...) The transformation is also seen in the use of the fortified fortresses, which centuries ago were defended at the cost of life, and for many years we have opened them to the general public and every year they are visited by more and more visitors from abroad and especially since the pandemic, and from the country. This makes us happy, that Romanian citizens also come and visit these fortresses, even if at first many did not know where, how, who manages them. In the meantime, I think many have gotten a taste and come. Some bring others", explained Bishop Reinhart Guib.
The most visited fortified Saxon churches in Transylvania are those in the municipalities of Brasov, Sibiu and the city of Sighisoara (Mures county). The top of the most visited fortified churches in rural areas in Sibiu county are the two UNESCO heritage churches, Biertan and Valea Viilor.
Cristian Cismaru mentioned that the Evangelical Church in Romania runs the "Fortivacation" program, which offers tourists holidays in fortified enclosures. The most famous are the brunches. Basically, the tourist pays between 150 and 200 lei and benefits from a six-hour program in a fortress church in which, two hours visit the place of worship and the respective village, another two hours are reserved for local gastronomy, in which dishes are generally consumed with Saxon specifics, and in another two hours a cultural program is offered, for example a music and dance workshop. Of the money paid by the tourist, a third, usually 50 lei, is a donation to the fortress church.
For tourists who only want to visit a fortified church, the ticket price is between 10 and 20 lei per person.
To simplify entry to these fortified churches in Transylvania, the Fortified Churches Foundation intends to digitize access and make online tickets available to tourists.
"We thought about digitizing access to churches, each church must have a well-established program, very clear prices and you can purchase tickets online. This will be the project for next year," Cristian Cismaru also declared.
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