Sibiu

Sibiu watches its visitors back. The dormer windows of the old Saxon houses — narrow, lidded, set in steep tile roofs — are known as the city's "eyes", and under their gaze Hermannstadt, capital of the Transylvanian Saxons, preserves one of Central Europe's most complete historic centres: three linked squares, the Bridge of Lies (which legend says will collapse under a falsehood), and the Brukenthal Palace, whose picture gallery opened to the public in 1817, making it Romania's oldest museum and one of the earliest in Europe.

The city's modern fame is theatrical: the Sibiu International Theatre Festival has grown into one of the largest performing-arts festivals in the world, ten June days when several hundred companies from every continent occupy the squares — momentum that helped make Sibiu European Capital of Culture in 2007, the first Romanian city so honoured. Music has the older address: the Sala Thalia, built in 1788 as one of the region's earliest theatres, is home to the State Philharmonic Sibiu, whose concerts have filled the hall for generations — philharmonic and hall both documented in the concert record.

Around the city, the Astra open-air museum spreads Romanian village civilisation through a forest, and the Făgăraș mountains close the horizon. Saxon stone, a world festival, an eighteenth-century concert hall: Sibiu is proof that provincial and provincial-minded are different things entirely.