Brasov Audio Tours

The Black Church in Brasov got its name from a fire in 1689 that devastated the city and left its stone walls blackened with soot. Construction on the church had begun in 1385, commissioned by the Transylvanian Saxon community who had settled the city in the 13th century, and the fire came just as the 92-year building project was reaching completion. The church was repaired and is now the largest Gothic church in Romania, its interior notable for a collection of Anatolian rugs donated by merchants in the 15th through 17th centuries and a Buchholz organ with 4,000 pipes, the largest mechanical instrument in the country.

Piata Sfatului, the central square of Brasov's old town, is one of the most appealing public spaces in Romania, surrounded by merchants' houses with red-tiled roofs and anchored by the 15th-century Council House, now a local history museum.

The square has been a market, a place of justice, and in 1987 the site of a workers' uprising against Ceaușescu's government that prefigured the 1989 revolution. Narrow alleys lead off from the square toward Strada Republicii and the old city walls, and the surrounding fortifications are well-preserved enough to walk in their entirety.