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Lived since the High Middle Ages onwards in Transylvania as well as in other parts of contemporary Romania. Additionally, the Transylvanian Saxons are the eldest ethnic German group in non-native majority German-inhabited Central-Eastern Europe, alongside the Zipsers in Slovakia and Romania (who began to settle in present-day Slovakia starting in the 13th century).
This is a list of localities in Transylvania that were, either in majority or in minority, historically inhabited by Transylvanian Saxons, having either churches placed in refuge castles for the local population (German: Kirchenburg = fortress church or Wehrkirche = fortified church), or only village churches (German: Dorfkirchen) built by the Transylvanian Saxons.
Illustration from 'Die Gartenlaube' (1884) depicting a group of Transylvanian Saxons during the Middle Ages. The Transylvanian Saxons, a group of the German diaspora which started to settle in Transylvania, present-day Romania, since the high medieval Ostsiedlung, have a regional culture which can be regarded as being both part of the broader German culture as well as the Romanian culture.
Transylvania is a historical region in central and northwestern Romania.It was under the rule of the Agathyrsi, part of the Dacian Kingdom (168 BC–106 AD), Roman Dacia (106–271), the Goths, the Hunnic Empire (4th–5th centuries), the Kingdom of the Gepids (5th–6th centuries), the Avar Khaganate (6th–9th centuries), the Slavs, and the 9th century First Bulgarian Empire.
Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Villages with Fortified Churches in Transylvania are seven villages (six Saxon and one Székely) founded by the Transylvanian Saxons. They are dominated by fortified churches and characterized by a specific settlement pattern that has been preserved since the Late Middle Ages. [1]
Beginning in the 12th century and increasingly in the 13th–14th centuries, Hungarian kings invited German colonists (mainly from present-day Luxembourg and the adjacent areas in western contemporary Germany) to settle in the then eastern lands of the Kingdom of Hungary; these German settlers became collectively known as the Transylvanian Saxons (German: Siebenbürger Sachsen).
Transylvanian Saxon is the native German dialect of the Transylvanian Saxons, an ethnic German minority group from Transylvania in central Romania, and is also one of the three oldest ethnic German and German-speaking groups of the German diaspora in Central and Eastern Europe, along with the Baltic Germans and Zipser Germans.
It is an inhabited medieval citadel that, in 1999, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its 850-year-old testament to the history and culture of the Transylvanian Saxons. Birthplace of Vlad III the Impaler (in Romanian Vlad Țepeș ), Sighișoara hosts, every year, a medieval festival where arts and crafts blend with rock music and ...