Sibiu, or the Art of Staying Official on the Road.

The route planner had drawn a blue line to Sibiu, and at some point we had collectively mistaken that for a democratic decision.

This is an absurdist field note. Sibiu is real. The streets, squares and landmarks are real. Several conversations, officials, forms and administrative procedures are not. A short factual reality check appears at the end.

The first man I met in Sibiu was selling hats beside a suspension bridge that was not a suspension bridge.

He was unhappy about both facts.

The hats were arranged on a folding table according to a system he refused to explain. There were wool hats in the heat, straw hats in the shade and one black felt hat placed on its own wooden stand like the defendant in a minor criminal case.

The bridge behind him was made of iron and curved politely over the road below. It had railings, flowers and the architectural confidence of something that had been photographed several million times. Nothing about it suggested suspension.

“It is a suspension bridge,” the man said.

I looked at the bridge.

He looked at me looking at the bridge.

“No cables,” I said.

“That is because they are not needed.”

This seemed, even by Romanian standards of roadside logic, a weak defence of a suspension bridge.

He sighed with the exhausted patience of a man who had spent years explaining bridge technology to foreigners who insisted on bringing engineering into it.

“It is suspended over the street.”

Technically, this was true.

I asked how much the black hat cost.

He told me that depended on whether I wanted the official price.

I asked what the unofficial price was.

He said there was no unofficial price.

“So there is only one price?”

“Yes.”

“And that is the official price?”

“No. That is the price.”

I did not buy the hat.

This felt less like a decision than the conclusion of a small administrative hearing.

The bridge was, in reality, the Bridge of Lies — Podul Minciunilor — the cast-iron pedestrian bridge at the edge of Piața Mică. The city’s own historic walking route treats it as one of the central links between the Lower Town and the squares above. It is not a suspension bridge. The hat seller remains unavailable for comment.

The blue line had made a decision

There are cities you visit because they are beautiful.

There are cities you visit because someone you know went there once and has spoken about it ever since with a form of moral superiority usually reserved for people who ferment their own vegetables.

And there are cities where you arrive because a route planner drew a blue line and nobody in the car was emotionally strong enough to argue with it.

Sibiu belonged, at least initially, to the third category.

The blue line had crossed Romania with the serene confidence of an institution that would not personally have to deal with roadworks, parking, missing lane markings or a petrol station whose coffee machine had been “temporarily” unavailable since approximately 2009.

Every few kilometres, the route planner adjusted the arrival time by three minutes and presented this as new information.

By the time Sibiu appeared on the signs, the navigation system had become less of a tool and more of a junior government department. It issued instructions, revised forecasts and reacted badly to dissent.

Turn left.

Recalculating.

Make a U-turn.

Recalculating.

Proceed to the route.

At no point did it acknowledge that we had proceeded to the route several countries ago.

Then Sibiu arrived almost all at once.

The wider roads tightened. The modern city moved closer around the car. The old centre appeared not as a grand reveal but as a gradual reduction in the amount of road that seemed appropriate for a vehicle.

This is one of Sibiu’s useful qualities. It is a proper city, not a historic centre preserved in isolation and surrounded by coach parking. But once you enter the old part, the scale changes quickly enough that walking stops being a lifestyle choice and becomes the obvious operating system.

The car had delivered us to Sibiu.

Sibiu no longer required the car.

The car, unfortunately, had not been consulted.

A city with its own surveillance architecture

The first thing the roofs do is watch you.

Sibiu’s famous roof windows — the “eyes of Sibiu” — are narrow, curved dormers cut into steep tiled roofs. The effect is architectural rather than supernatural, but only just.

Walk through Piața Mare and several buildings appear to be monitoring whether you have ordered enough coffee to justify your table.

Move into Piața Mică and the scrutiny becomes more intimate.

Enter one of the passages toward the Lower Town and the roofs seem to have reached a decision without telling you what it is.

The city’s official tourism material calls them the “eyes of the city”, which is charming wording for a feature that makes an entire historic centre look as if it knows you lied about checking out before eleven.

I became convinced that they were part of the municipal administration.

This theory explained several things.

Why nobody seemed surprised when we took the wrong street.

Why the parking machine already knew we had no coins.

Why a waiter brought the bill before I had fully decided whether I wanted another drink.

And why the man at the bridge had been so confident that there was only one price but no official price.

Information was circulating.

I had no evidence for this.

The roofs did.

The three-square problem

Sibiu’s centre is arranged around Piața Mare, Piața Mică and Piața Huet, three connected spaces that work so naturally together that a visitor can walk between them several times before realising they have technically changed squares.

This is excellent urban design and terrible news for anyone attempting to remain administratively precise.

“Where are we?”

“The square.”

“Which square?”

“The one with the tower.”

“There is more than one tower.”

“The big tower.”

“That has made this worse.”

Piața Mare does what a European main square is supposed to do. It opens suddenly, gives the buildings enough space to look important and provides terraces from which people can observe other people pretending not to observe them.

Piața Mică is tighter and stranger. Arcades, roof eyes, the bridge and the slope toward the Lower Town make it feel less ceremonial and more operational.

Piața Huet, around the Evangelical church, shifts the mood again. The city folds inward. Stairs and passages begin to matter. You can see how the medieval layers connect instead of merely standing in front of them.

The official historic route explains this sensibly.

We did not.

We had developed a private classification system.

Large Square: coffee.

Small Square: bridge dispute.

Huet Square: stairs.

This was enough information to run a government.

The office of remaining official

The phrase “remain official” entered the trip at the hotel.

There was no good reason for it.

The receptionist needed a passport. I provided a passport. She needed a signature. I provided a signature. She handed me a key card and explained breakfast.

Nothing unusual had happened.

Then she looked at the registration form, looked at me and said, in English:

“Everything must remain official.”

I nodded because this is what you do when somebody says a sentence that sounds important but contains no actionable information.

She stamped the form.

The stamp changed the atmosphere completely.

Until that moment, we had been checking into a hotel.

Now we appeared to have concluded a bilateral agreement.

I asked whether I needed the paper.

“No.”

“Should I keep it?”

“Yes.”

“For what?”

She thought about this.

“To remain official.”

The phrase followed us for the rest of the day.

Cross the street on green: remain official.

Ask for a receipt: remain official.

Return the hotel umbrella: remain official.

Order a second beer without moving tables: potentially still official, although the legal position was unclear.

By dinner, remaining official had become the central challenge of the trip.

Sibiu itself was not making this difficult. On the contrary. The centre is compact, walkable and unusually easy to understand.

We were making it difficult because travel becomes more interesting the moment a harmless phrase is given authority it never requested.

The stairs were not optional

Sibiu has an Upper Town and a Lower Town, which sounds like a social distinction until you discover that much of the difference can be resolved by walking down some steps.

The Passage of the Stairs connects the two through stonework, arches and fortification walls around the Evangelical church. The city’s official tourism site dates the passage to the 13th century and notes that it preserves its original aspect.

It is also an efficient system for discovering whether your hotel breakfast was a strategic error.

Going down is pleasant.

Going up is policy.

Halfway back toward the Upper Town, I stopped beside a wall and attempted to look interested in medieval masonry.

This is a useful technique when breathing has become too public.

A couple walked past without difficulty.

A child ran up the steps.

An elderly man carrying two shopping bags overtook me while apparently discussing football on the phone.

I studied the wall more seriously.

The wall had been there for centuries and seemed supportive.

At the top, I concluded that the division between Upper and Lower Town had probably been invented by somebody living in the Upper Town.

This conclusion is not supported by the historical record.

It remains emotionally correct.

The tower you cannot currently climb

The Council Tower sits between Piața Mare and Piața Mică and normally performs the useful function of allowing visitors to climb above the roofs they have spent the afternoon being watched by.

At the time of writing, that is not possible.

The official Sibiu County tourism site says the Council Tower is closed for rehabilitation, with works expected to continue until the end of 2027.

This is exactly the kind of practical fact that many travel articles will continue to ignore until at least 2029.

In the logic of our trip, however, the closure became evidence that the tower itself had failed to remain official.

A building had been removed from active service pending administrative correction.

This made sense.

I considered asking whether visitors could receive a certificate confirming that they had not climbed it.

I did not ask.

There are limits to how much comedy should be outsourced to municipal staff.

If you want a high view while the Council Tower is closed, the Evangelical church tower on Piața Huet is the obvious alternative. The county tourism site currently lists it as open to visitors with viewing access from the upper level.

This is useful information.

It also ruins the story slightly by demonstrating that Sibiu has already solved the problem.

Lunch became evidence

At lunch we ordered too much food because the menu contained photographs and optimism.

The waiter wrote nothing down.

This concerned me.

I have always distrusted people who can remember six separate decisions without visible documentation.

He returned with exactly what we had ordered.

This concerned me more.

The meal was good. The beer was cold. The terrace was full without feeling crowded. Nobody attempted to explain local authenticity to us.

Then the bill arrived.

It was long.

Very long.

The receipt contained the table number, time, tax information, itemised drinks, itemised food and enough numeric structure to imply that lunch had been audited by a regional authority.

I placed the hotel registration paper beside it.

We now had a file.

The day had generated evidence.

This is an underestimated pleasure of travelling by car through Central and Eastern Europe: by evening, every pocket contains a small archive. Parking tickets. Fuel receipts. toll slips. hotel cards. restaurant bills. A handwritten Wi-Fi password. A piece of paper you cannot identify but are afraid to throw away near a border.

The objects survive long after their purpose disappears.

Months later, one emerges from a jacket and reminds you not of a cathedral or museum, but of standing beside a machine at 22:14 wondering whether button B meant “confirm” or “cancel the legal basis for parking”.

That is memory too.

Sibiu becomes more convincing when nothing happens

The joke eventually runs out of administration.

This is when Sibiu becomes good.

Not spectacularly good. Not “hidden gem” good. Not good in the sense required by an article whose title contains a number and the word “unmissable”.

Just easy to be in.

The centre is handsome without demanding a constant schedule. The distances are short enough that a wrong turn is rarely expensive. The Lower Town gives you somewhere to wander when the squares start feeling too complete. Terraces make stopping feel like part of the visit rather than a failure to optimise it.

And the city is compact enough that repetition helps rather than hurts.

You cross the same square again at a different hour.

You recognise the same roof.

You pass the same bridge and notice that the hat seller is gone.

For a moment I worried this weakened the story.

Then I saw the black hat still sitting on the wooden stand.

The table was gone.

The man was gone.

The hat remained.

Nobody nearby seemed concerned.

I considered waiting.

Instead, I walked back toward the hotel.

There are situations in which asking fewer questions is the most official thing you can do.

What is actually true

Sibiu needs very little fictional assistance to be interesting.

Its historic centre really is structured around Piața Mare, Piața Mică and Piața Huet, linked by streets, passages and the slope between Upper and Lower Town. The city’s official historic walking route is a useful way to understand that layout without turning the day into a checklist.

The Bridge of Lies is real and is a cast-iron pedestrian bridge over Strada Ocnei, not a suspension bridge. The “eyes of Sibiu” are the distinctive lens-shaped roof windows visible throughout the historic centre; the city itself highlights them in its material on Piața Mare and Piața Mică.

The Passage of the Stairs really does connect the Upper and Lower Town through medieval walls and arcades. The official tourism page describes it as dating from the 13th century and preserving its original aspect: Passage of the Stairs.

And, most importantly for anyone using an older guide, the Council Tower is currently closed for rehabilitation, with the county tourism authority stating that works are expected to last until the end of 2027. The Evangelical church tower remains the practical alternative for a panorama over the city.

The hat seller is fictional.

Probably.