Sighișoara is a city on the Târnava Mare River in Mureș
County, Romania.
Located in the historic region of Transylvania, Sighișoara
has a population of 28,102 according to the 2011 census.
It is a popular tourist destination for its well-preserved
walled old town, which is listed by UNESCO as a World
Heritage Site.
During the 12th century, German craftsmen and
merchants known as the Transylvanian Saxons were
invited to Transylvania by the King of Hungary to settle
and defend the frontier of his realm. The chronicler
Krauss lists a Saxon settlement in present-day Sighișoara
by 1191.[citation needed] A document of 1280 records a
town built on the site of a Roman fort as Castrum Sex or
"six-sided camp", referring to the fort's shape of an
irregular hexagon. Other names recorded include
Schaäsburg (1282), Schespurg (1298) and Segusvar (1300).
By 1337 Sighișoara had become a royal center for the
kings, who awarded the settlement urban status in 1367 as
the Civitas de Segusvar.
The city played an important strategic and commercial
role at the edges of Central Europe for several centuries.
Sighișoara became one of the most important cities of
Transylvania, with artisans from throughout the Holy
Roman Empire visiting the settlement. The German
artisans and craftsmen dominated the urban economy, as
well as building the fortifications protecting it. It is
estimated that during the 16th and 17th centuries
Sighișoara had as many as 15 guilds and 20 handicraft
branches. The Baroque sculptor Elias Nicolai lived in the
city. The Wallachian voivode Vlad Dracul (father of Vlad
the Impaler (Dracula)), who lived in exile in the town, had
coins minted in the city (otherwise coinage was the
monopoly of the Hungarian kings in the Kingdom of
Hungary) and issued the first document listing the city's
Romanian name, Sighișoara. The Romanian name is first
attested in 1435, and derives from the Hungarian
Segesvár, where vár is "fort".