Segesvár

The Clock tower

Bergkirche

SEGESVÁR Segesvár's history goes back to the ancient ages. During the Roman Empire, a garrison, called Castrum Stenarum was here guarding the important military road leading to Gyulafehérvár (Lat. Apulum). Castrum Stenarum must have had a busy commercial life, too, because of the many archeological coin findings from this age.
After the Hungarian Conquest of Transylvania in 896, the Hungarians populated the area. After many wars, the population was decimated and to refill their places, Hungarian kings Géza II, (1141-1162), and Andrew II (1205-1235) invited Saxons from Saxony, Germany, to settle and replenish life here. The Saxons started to built a fortress in 1191, which is referred to in a chart dated 1280 as castrum Sax, and in another one dated 1367 as Civitas de Segusvar. Segesvár became a Saxon town and it was fortified during the reign of Hungarian king Charles Robert (1308-1342) of the House of Anjou, but the fortification procedure lasted until the Battle of Mohács (1526). Segesvár received the majority of its present buildings, walls, churches in this period. The town dinamically developed and by the 14th century, its handcrafts industry was well-known.
In 1506, in the Saxon Bergkirche, on the hilltop of the town of Segesvár, signed the the three major ethnic populations of Transylvania, i.e., the Hungarians, the Székelys, and the Saxons, a pact for mutual aid, called the unio trium nationum (union of three nations). A contemporary historian wrote: Transylvania is a three-legged chair; if you knock out a single leg the whole thing turns upside down. At this time, the Vlach (Rumanian) population did not yet form a unified national and territorial entity in Transylvania to be considered as a factor for inclusion in the pact. The German population of the town converted to the Lutheran (Evangelical) faith in the 16th century.
The clock tower was the main gate of the old town. It was built in the 14th century and served as the City Hall until 1556. In a fire in 1676, the tower suffered damages but it was soon rebuilt in baroque style, and in 1891, it received a painted-tile roof.
The Evangelical church stands on the highest place of the town (Hilltop church Ger. Bergkirche). An older romanesque chapel's foundations were used to build it upon, which was started in 1350, but the church was modified between 1429-1488. Restoration work was done on the Bergkirche in 1838, due to an earthquake. The 53-meter-long, 3-aisle church has ten large windows and a 42-meter-high tower, which is unfinished. The southern porch resembles to that of the cathedral of Kassa, Northern Hungary, (Kosice, Slovakia today).
Inside, the ceiling has net-type stucco ornaments and rests on two rows of doric columns. The church's Tabernacle is from 1438, the renaissance Stallum from 1523. During the 1934 restoration, frescos were discovered on the walls.
On the battle field, outside of Segesvár, fell Sándor Petőfi , the great Hungarian patriotic poet, during a crucial battle of the Hungarian Liberation Fight in 1849.