FEELING as if no other flight had come in that afternoon, passengers filed silently out of the aircraft into the shadowless light of a summer evening, walking slowly into the emptiness of Sibiu airport in southern Romania.

Having boarded on the final leg of a long flight from Manila in bustling Munich, I was taken aback by the unexpected stillness of the airport, without any inkling that this was a foretaste of the solitude I was to experience in Transylvania, a vast geographical region that, I discovered, extended from Romania into neighboring Hungary.

Only three taxis queued at the stand outside the arrival area. I thankfully slid into the last one, sitting back for the drive into the city that passed warehouse after warehouse before coming to ominous rows of impersonal, brutalist Russian-era concrete housing blocks. It was well past six in the evening. Hardly anyone was on the streets.

Suddenly, the massive medieval fortifications surrounding the historic center of Sibiu unexpectedly came into view.

Heritage city

Circumscribed by thick brick walls is a living heritage city of Gothic churches, Renaissance buildings, Baroque palaces, and a maze of tile-roofed traditional houses on both sides of ancient crooked streets, an architectural depiction of the city?s eight centuries of urban history.

Archaeologically proven to exist since 1191, Sibiu?s fortifications were built in the 15th century as protection from Turkish attacks. Centuries earlier, after withdrawal of the Roman Empire in 271 AD, waves of Slav, Petcheng, Cumainan and Tartar migrants passed through the area. In the ninth century, Hungary took control of what has become modern Transylvania.

Adding to the scant Romanian and Hungarian population, a succession of kings recruited Saxon colonists from Germany, lured them away from the feudal system, granted them freedom to farm the rich land and guard the vast Transylvanian territory.

At the end of the 16th century, Transylvania fell into Ottoman control for about 90 years, after which it was annexed to the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Although the two World Wars did not cause much destruction, Sibiu became part of Romania when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved after World War I. The recently ended Communist era brought an acute lack of investment from which the country is trying to recover.

Sibiu, a small city of roughly 150,000 inhabitants, has an admirably preserved historic urbanscape that radiates from three adjoining squares whose architecture reflects the city?s multicultural origins. Once the center of Saxon Transylvania and a major transportation hub in central Romania, restored Sibiu was named European Cultural Capital for 2007.

Historic ensemble

From the narrow streets of the lower town lined with 19th-century houses, 16th-century passages wind between houses with steps rising from the lower to the upper town, Sibiu?s historic center, where at the edge of a large, cobbled plaza stands the City Hall, a splendid 1906 Jugendstil building that dominates the expansive Piata Mare (Big Square).

Next to it stands the imposing Baroque Brukenthal Palace (1785) that is now the city?s major museum. Completing the historic ensemble are the Roman Catholic church (1733) and former Jesuit college (1739), both elegantly built in a gentle, nonaggressive Baroque style.

Key words

?Gentle? and ?nonaggressive,? I was to learn later, were to be my key words for understanding Transylvania.

Gentle was my feeling when transitioning under a dark, arched arcade tunneling under a tower while walking from Sibiu?s grand Piata Mare to the smaller, more intimate Piata Mica (Small Square), whose 19th-century houses are now refitted out as small museums, lovely bed-and-breakfasts, and open-air cafés that serve the greatest pizzas or solid Romanian food hearty with dollops of sour cream and crusty bread, just right for washing down with local beer.

Meals ended with our lingering as long as we could over dessert and little cups of potent espresso.

The plaza would have been a perfect place for people watching except that there weren?t many tourists or locals to watch.

Nor were there many people on the side streets leading away from the main plazas into the residential sections, which connect by tunneled arcades through old buildings to the historic center. Covered by steep, tile roofs, simple houses that have survived intact from the 18th and 19th centuries line the streets, their large wooden gates opening into leafy interior courtyards.

Outstanding is the Romanian conservation effort put into the historic center. Its totally pedestrianized core, defined by the two plazas and the major adjoining streets, is newly landscaped, paved and recobbled, with its power lines completely buried underground.

Monumental lighting bathes the buildings every night. The faultlessly restored architecture around the plazas is impeccable, a sight to see.

Conservation activity

Equally impeccable is the constant conservation activity going on in the old city, where artisans work on heritage buildings and houses, employing craftsman construction techniques in the old tradition while using handmade construction materials which are practically impossible to find in more industrialized countries today.

The respect for the heritage of historic Sibiu is admirable. Not only are existing buildings and homes restored; all exterior elements like signage, street lighting and paving are standardized.

No new architectural intrusions are visible at all. Cafés, shops, and even supermarkets are skillfully and unobtrusively inserted into street-level spaces in heritage buildings.

Because of obvious control exercised by local heritage authorities, there is a strong sense of integrity in the historic ensemble of Sibiu. Everything matches up without any unwelcome elements to jar the heritage setting.

Architectural unity, so rare and difficult to achieve, exists in the old town of Sibiu.

E-mail the author at pride.place@gmail.com.