Fortified Churches

When we planned our trip to Romania, we knew that the Romanians were a very spiritual Nation. There are churches in every village. Not just one, but several!  Each province has a different style. We have visited Saxon Protestant fortified churches dating from the Middle Ages. Exotic Orthodox painted churches and wooden churches with steeples reaching to the heavens. In order not to bore you silly I will send different blogs on the different types of church.

The Saxons came to Romania in 1437. They built their churches in the centre of their villages, but a century later the country was being invaded by Tartars and wars were raging all around, so they built walls round the churches and built tall lookout bell towers.  Today the churches look like castles.

  

The churches inside are plain.

The altar was brought from Austria in the 13th Century 

We decided the font was even older.

To our surprise all notices were in German.

The keys were very old and very large!

The bell tower, for some reason was always separate from the church.

We visited about four churches, all were very similar, but magnificent. 

The portcullis, was just to make sure the invaders didn't get in!

The area between the church and the walls was used to house the villagers -if there was an attack.

 From the top of the tower it was possible to see the layout of the village - all Romanian villages are laid out in this ribbon development. The long buildings are designed for humans to live in the front and the animals at the back - rather similar to medieval Spain I suppose!