Professor Bodenschatz cited Spanish Square in the massive residential area of Hellersdorf, Rob Krier and Christoph Kohlís work on Potsdamís new town, and the reconstructed urban grid of the Planwerk Inmenstadt as notable efforts in regeneration broadly following the path of critical reconstruction today.

In a session in which discussion of architecture rather than urbanism was dominant, it was noted that the 1990s saw a context of tremendous pressure to hand out building permits although there was still a focus on critical reconstruction.   Christoph Sattler pointed out that the compact city was still an explicit aim, with the term "European city" based on existing ground plans beginning to be used programmatically as the basis for new development, rather than "hysterical high-rise intensification".   Formal guidance was provided but with freedom within that for different architectural signatures.   In fact, some speakers argued that it was only the dialogue the building has with the street that mattered, not its height.   Dr Matthew Hardy reminded participants that the Congress theme was a review of the modernist project using critical reconstruction as both critique and alternative approach.   Dr Hardy spiked the notion proposed by another speaker in this session that new development in Berlin needed to be "of its time" architecturally, arguing that this was shorthand for defining modernist style as the only appropriate architectural response.

Day One also dealt with urban issues in outer Berlin, on the peripheries and in the wider region.   Chief among these was the redevelopment of the ëslaburbsí, leftover public housing on a mammoth scale that was still being built well into the 1970s and now required wholesale regeneration into more humane urban fabric.   With vacancy rates over 20%, and well over a million housing units standing empty, this is no small problem.   Dr Heike Liebmann explained how some East German prefabricated housing estates were being reconfigured both spatially and in terms of housing typologies, to lessen the block's massive bulk and reshape them into lower rise (six storey), more diverse forms that re-used building materials and contributed to redeveloped street patterns.   A fascinating aspect of this process was the way that residents themselves had moved into and designed apartment "shells" to suit their own needs rather than being passive recipients of preordained housing types.

Christoph Kohl described the creation of a new town in Potsdam on which he worked with Rob Krier.   Potsdam New Town is based on sound urbanist principles to create a place with its own genus loci.   Key to the approach was the breaking up of large sites into smaller plots to allow a fine grain of architectural responses from a range of practitioners within a strict urban master plan framework.   As Christoph Kohl said, making a new suburb that felt familiar was "not a question of ability, more of methodology".

Professor Undine Giseke showed how a new type of regional park in Berlin-Brandenburg was being created using principles of landscape ecology and public access; and combining traditional greenspace uses with more productive agricultural and "everyday" landscapes on the urban edges of the Berlin conurbation.

From a very full roundtable discussion that closed Day One, the comments made by John Norquist stood out as memorable.   John Norquist, ex Mayor of Milwaukee, and now president and CEO of the CNU, argued that for Berlin to get involved in place wars with other German and European cities was dangerous and silly.

Instead, Norquist said, Berlin should concentrate on making life better for its citizens and network with other towns.   He argued that design is a good use of a Mayor's time.   "In a democracy it's better to create beauty with the people".

Themes from Day One "Berlin: An Experiment in European Urban Development" - in Summary

A number of themes seemed to emerge from the detailed discussions in Day One and some are captured below:

Berlin provides a master class or urban approaches over time and at many scales from the building to the region.   A 20th century history of large scale modernist interventions was rightly challenged by critical reconstruction.   In fact, the city has been a laboratory for social movements from below as well as transformation from above.

Berlin can be understood in many ways:

John Prescott invoked Jane Jacobs' survey of the disastrous results of 20th century planning and urged us to rediscover the art of making places where people can mix and meet.   Jane Jacobs, said John Prescott, defined what he calls sustainable communities, where social, economic and environmental concerns are balanced, meeting the needs of existing and future generations and respecting the needs of others.   This was not just about making buildings and public spaces look good.   They have to feel safe and secure as well.   Sustainable communities must have good local economies and transport services - providing jobs, schools, health and other service that are accessible to all.   In 2003 John Prescott published the Sustainable Communities Plan and he spoke of some of the specific initiatives to establish sustainable communities in the UK in existing declining urban areas, in places suffering low demand, on brownfields sites and in major urban growth areas like the Thames Gateway east of London.

To achieve sustainable communities, John Prescott gave support to improvements in governance, to planning systems, to the use of design coding, and to end silo thinking in government and administration that was bad for cities.   He congratulated the Council for European Urbanism for organising such a major event at an important time in the debate on the future of cities in Europe and across the world.

Audun Engh, from the CEU secretariat, then described the ways in which the CEU is taking forward a programme of reform for urbanism across Europe.   He suggested that the charrette process (sometimes know as Enquiry by Design) was key to improving city development processes in a community based and responsive way.   Charrettes he said could be neutral on architectural style but needed to be based on contextual urban design principles as set out in the CEU Charter as a method for social integration.   Codes and guidelines could be employed to help manage urban change in a predictable way.   Audun Engh also spoke about the CEUís support for INTBAUís proposed new European School of Urbanism and Architecture which would take forward the vision set out in CEUís 2004 Viseu Declaration on Education.

Following Pierre Laconte on "Brussels: The Impossible Capital of Europe", the rest of the morning on Day Two covered a wide range of examples of projects in two parallel sessions, from a diversity of European towns and cities.   (I attended the session on perspectives from Sweden and the Netherlands and would be happy to hear from anyone who went to the Bella Italia session to fill in details for this report).   I can say that the "Bella Italia" session was devoted to recent urbanism in Italy including "Recent Developments in Traditional Urbanism in Italy" from Professor Luigi Mollo; "A Successful Story: The Reconstruction of the Historical Centre of Palermo" from Professor Giovanni Fatta; and "Urban Architecture in Italy: An Alive Tradition" from Professor Enrico Dassori.

Peter Elmlund explored "Perspectives in Sweden: Between the Baltic Corridor and Pre-Fab Conversion" while Mieke Bosse and Peter Drijver considered "Randstadí and New Towns: Un-Modern Strategies for the Netherlands".   As Peter Drijver and Mieke Bosse noted, the Dutch Randstad, the Ruhrgebeit and connected urban areas in North West Europe function as "one big overheated city".   It is one in which super-modernist architects are practising and dormitory suburbs are still being built, but there are also others doing good work that is largely ignored by the architecture schools and glossy magazines.   Peter Drijver and Mieke Bosse showed a range of these projects and referred to a ëflip-over bookí, guiding a kind of urban morphological approach that deals with the stratification or urban typologies over time and gives practitioners contextual clues for their architectural language.   Work shown included traditional streets as well as intriguing "castle", village and big box wrapping typologies. As Peter Drijver and Mieke Bosse put it, the aim is to create architecture that is more invisible as an object.

In the afternoon of Day Two, under the direction of Professor Wolfgang Christ, we moved further afield into eastern Europe, with Tomasz Gamdzyk and his colleague describing "The New Warsaw: City Development Perspectives in Poland".   Again the twin tracks of modernism in Eastern and Western Europe were well demonstrated in relation to a range of modernisation projects.   Again there was a similar critique beginning to emerge to challenge these approaches from the late 197os onwards.

John Norquist, CEO of the CNU then most entertainingly and insightfully compared the 20th century trajectories of Berlin and cities in Middle America, demonstrating the destructive power of modernist ideology in both places.   He traced the thinking behind among other things massive freeway building and wholesale urban neighbourhood demolitions in both Berlin and Detroit to their pre-war intellectual antecedents and showed their disastrous effects on post war cities on each continent.

The issues said John Norquist were the same in both places: sprawl.   As he explained, when CNU formed urbanism was stigmatised.   Yet urbanism is sophisticated and complex.   It creates culture whereas sprawl is stupid.   What else can you call a spatial arrangement that sites office buildings so that they have no pedestrian access and so makes it illegal to walk to lunch, or sites parking so that cars have prime riverfront views to enjoy all day?

John Norquist suggested that the Corbusian derived ideal of towers in a green park is still seductive even though it has now been conclusively shown that, for instance, big box, interior facing malls don't work.   While big box developments are still popular in the US they are now more like big department stores of the early 20th century, again located in main streets within proper urban fabric.

John Norquist also talked about the spaghetti of major roads and freeway systems that damage many American cities and spoke of his experience as Mayor of Milwaukee in removing a freeway and overcoming blight. In a context where "balanced transport policy means half asphalt and half concrete" this was a major paradigm shift. Instead of seeing transport flows as dendritic, the street grid should be approached as a kind of urban wetland soaking up capacity in a more sustainable way. The slides of Detroitís decline, from a proud down town to a devastated urban core, were a testament to the terrible urban mistakes of the post war years.

George Ferguson, of the Royal Institute of British Architects, was equally passionate about the need for urbanism as a basis for good city form, in addressing "Urban Renaissance in England".   He pointed out that what has become New Urbanism is actually old urbanism as practised in Europe for millennia.   The city he said is a work of art although he questioned the notion of the ëwow factorí in making good places.   He worried too about how to avoid making places into urban deserts for security reasons and the march of the chain stores making places all feel the same.   George Ferguson used his home town of Bristol of an example of successful urban renaissance and closed with some information about the UKís new Academy of Urbanism, an initiative of the RIBA, whose 100 members aim to provide leadership in order to promote urbanism in the UKís cities in future.

Irit Solzi and Yodan Rofe then discussed "Beyond Tel Aviv: Legacy and Challenges", showing that cityís wonderful Bauhaus architectural heritage and the problems of urban growth that it now faces.   They demonstrated that the flight to the suburbs is not just an American issue but one facing countries like Israel too.   They noted the twin problems of the inadequate quality of the housing stock in traditional centres and towns and the outdated planning practices that undercut urbanism.   Israel, they reported, had some way to go to catch up in applying urbanist principles to its urban development.   Participants were formally invited to the Inaugural Congress of the Movement for Israeli Urbanism to be held in Beer-Sheva on December 12, 2005 followed on December 13 by an urban design charette with members from the community, the municipality and the university.

Next in this session Professors José Baganha and Javier Cenicacelaya discussed "Bilbao and Lisbon: The Iberian Peninsula Setting the Mark".   They spoke of Spain and Portugal's inheritance of compact cities which showed the need for, and respected, urbanity.   Javier Cenicacelaya used the metaphor of the school report card for "conduct".   He discussed how we might judge the civility of places in the same way that he was judged in terms of civility as a school child.   He decried the development of the city as a "cacophony of objects" and showed a number of poor uncontextual examples that were intentionally disruptive of urban form.   Jose Baganha feared the rash of golf course centred ghettoes for rich people now emerging in Portugal and the increasing segregation of social (public) housing.   He asked whether we were experiencing the "wow factor" or a "wow factor plague" of architectural objects.   As José Baganha said, we need conviviality, and his beautiful watercolour wash line drawings seemed to distil the essence of this quality.

Ray Gindroz of the CNU Board also provided some distilled essence, with very pertinent lessons from the experience of New Urbanists in the United States in bringing more urbanist principles to bear on the development process.   Among other things he noted the need to tackle the issue of architectural style head on rather than denying it was central to the urbanist debate.

The day's last session was a podium discussion on "Perspectives for CEU" led by Dr Matthew Hardy and involving Robert Adam, Peter Drijver, Dr Herman Scheer, Michael Stojan and Professor Gabriele Tagliaventi.   As Dr Hardy noted in his introduction to the discussion, the CEU must deal with a series of challenges to the city especially in the area of environmental sustainability, including declining supplies of oil, not enough water or too much water.   Just as the Congress had looked back 30 years to see what could be learned from the review of modernism in the 1970s, he asked the panel to look 30 years into the future and consider what CEU should be doing to meet these and other urban challenges.

Notable in this session was Robert Adam's point that one thing we do know is that we cannot be sure about what will happen.   In this lies an essential paradox.   The further forward we look the less certain we can be.   Past predictions about energy use such as those made in the energy crises of the 1970s had not come to pass, so we should be very careful about being too prescriptive about the future.

Among a number of pertinent points made, speakers agreed that CEU was well placed to work with other partners in government and among urban stakeholders to pursue its Charter aims.   European cities had a long term urbanist framework and traditions, and there was growing recognition of the need to revive those traditions and practices of urban place making, which as the Congress demonstrated, provided a valuable basis for the future.

Professor Harald Kegler, Chair of CEU Germany, and Susan Parham, Chair of CEU Europe, made very brief closing statements and introduced the draft Declaration of Berlin, the final form of which will be posted on the CEU and CEU Germany websites shortly.

Themes from New Perspectives in City Development: Europe and Beyond - in Summary

There were a number of messages from the sessions in Day Two that seem worth summarising:

Cities matter.   Profound demographic change will mean an urban future for many of the world's population, making urbanism increasingly important.   With this urban growth comes a range of sustainability challenges that we have not yet come to grips with.

Within an overall context of urban expansion, cities are experiencing growth and decline, with shrinking and growing both causing problems and opportunities for urbanism.

European cities are labouring under an inheritance of modernist ideology.   Sprawl is stupid. Detroit is a paradigm from the new world of what can go wrong.   Urbanism by contrast is sophisticated.   It creates culture and quality of life.   And there are plenty of examples from the scale of the individual building to the city region that demonstrate that.

Urbanism is hot.   Urban morphological approaches like critical reconstruction are valuable.   Urban principles need to be articulated and followed to create or retrieve fine grained, human scaled places, but a high urban density alone is not sufficient for good place making.

Berlin and the other cities we studied during the Congress demonstrate how action is needed in all kinds of urban conditions from reshaping public housing through reviving public space to building new mixed use, sustainable communities.

In so doing we should avoid confusion between modernity and modernism as a style.   There is lots of good work being done quietly that doesnít feature in the architectural magazines as it intends to be more or less invisible but makes a profoundly positive contribution to the urban fabric.

Process matters.   We must end silo thinking and integrate across sectors and disciplines.   We have a range of techniques to call on for place making including charrettes and design coding.   We also have a range of instruments to use including new financing, regulatory and governance models and systems.   We should look critically at the rules that affect urban space.

Our prospects look good. [CEU] can learn from the American experience of the Congress for New Urbanism to establish alliances and energise the urban development process.   Governments do see a key role for organisations like the CEU and we must make use of this social and political capital to pursue our Charter aims.

Education matters.   We have to better teach ourselves in order to more effectively share our Charter message.   CEU should continue to work with partners like INTBAU, and like minded organisations like the Academy for Urbanism and the Sustainable Communities Programme to bring urbanism into the mainstream of European place making.

Finally, participants from many disciplines, traditions and places share a lot of common ground and a high level of energy to pursue more humane urbanism across Europe in future.   We need to build on that for the good of all.
- Susan Parham, CEU Chair, 24th September 2005

INTBAU was a co-founder of the Council for European Urbanism in 2003 and an official partner organisation of the CEU Congress in Berlin.   Maps courtesy Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Bau- und Wohnungswesen.

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Prince Faisal Bin Fahd Award
For the preservation of Islamic cultural heritage
Call for entries for the first award

The Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA) of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) undertakes activities relating to research, publication, documentation, restoration and conservation concerning the arts and cultures of the Muslim world.   One of its objectives is to record, preserve and make known the assets of the Islamic cultural heritage, including fixed assets related to archaeology, cities and architectural monuments and movable tangible and intangible -assets such as manuscript works, library and archive items, audio-visual objects and materials, traditional arts and other products and forms of expression of Islamic cultures.   With this aim, the Centre publishes references, maintains data banks and organizes competitions and exhibitions.

The present competition is planned as a major activity relating to the Islamic architectural heritage.   The competition is dedicated to the memory of the late Prince Faisal bin Fahd bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, who was the Chairman of the International Commission for the Preservation of Islamic Cultural Heritage (ICPICH).

The purpose of the competition is to support the revival of Islamic heritage - preservation of monuments in order to give them vital functions, either historical or contemporary.   The competition is open to completed projects of extraordinary contribution to the preservation of Islamic cultural heritage realized in the last five years.   The competition will be organized every three years, starting with the first cycle in 2005.   The subsequent competitions will be devoted to other themes concerning the preservation of Islamic cultural heritage.

Governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as individuals are invited to apply to the competition.   Every effort in this respect will be properly recognized and will be stated in the conditions of the competitions.   Three equal awards will be presented to the best projects. The exhibition of the participating projects will be organized and a catalogue of this exhibition could be published.   All projects should be presented in Arabic or English.

AWARD PROCEDURES

Project Eligibility
The Award seeks out the broadest possible range of preservation interventions: restoration and social efforts are considered, as are contemporary design projects in corporation with historic sites and those demonstrating the use of appropriate technologies.   Although there are no fixed criteria as to the type, nature, location, or cost of projects to be considered for the Award, eligible projects must be designed for or used by Muslim communities, in part or in whole, wherever they are located.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURES

Application
Applications are the official means of enrollment of projects to be considered for the Award.   The identities of applicants will be strictly confidential, as are the names of applied projects.

Identification programme
In addition to the application procedures, the Award has developed a project identification program which is open to all Governmental, Non-governmental and individuals who wish to bring projects to the attention of the Award.   The project identification program ensures a broad geographic and architectural representation of projects, and updates the Award archives on building activity in the Muslim world.   To register a project, preliminary documentation forms may be obtained by contacting the Award Office or by completing the on-line form.

Documentation
The architects of projects enrolled through the nomination program will receive an Award documentation package which describes the standardized presentation requirements.   In addition to submitting photographs, slides, and architectural drawings, architects are asked to complete a detailed questionnaire pertaining to use, cost, environmental and climatic factors, construction materials, building schedule, and, more importantly, design concepts and each project's significance within its own context.

REVIEW AND SELECTION PROCEDURES

Master Jury
The seven-member international jury of the competition is selected from among world renowned prominent scholars and professionals as follows:

The organizers of the congress have announced special offers for "the next generation" of traditional urbanists.   Students and young architects and urbanists can attend the event by paying just EURO150.

For more details on the congress please visit www.ceunet.de

For further details about the programme please click here.   The registration forms are also available online, in PDF format.

The International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism (INTBAU) is a supporter of the CEU Congress in Berlin.

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London Can Take It
Londoners get on with their lives after four blasts kill 50, injure 700

Thousands of Londoners - including INTBAU's staff - walked home on the evening of 7 July, but they were calm and composed, keen to get on with their lives, and far from being intimidated.   The attacks which killed 37 commuters caused widespread disruption to transport, but not to the city as a whole.
Photos: Dorin Boila

Smoke could be smelt in the street outside INTBAU's head office, half a mile from Liverpool Street Station, but so far it appears that all INTBAU members in London are safe and well.   We extend our heartfelt commiserations to all those who have lost family members and friends.

We also extend our thanks to to all those who have contacted us today asking after us.   Thank you all very much for your concern.   We will be back at work tomorrow as usual.
- Matthew Hardy & Aura Neag

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Scholarship Opportunity for Commonwealth Citizens
Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 offers new award
for 'the sustainability of cities'

After the successful award of early Fellowships for research into 'Landscape and Modernity', 'Urban Issues' and, more recently, into 'Human Habitation', 'Transport and the Built Environment' and Housing for the 21st Century', the Commission now intends to make a further, similar award.

Continuing their theme of important matters for study within the context of the Built Environment, the Commissioners have selected as the subject for this year's competition the sustainability of the cities.   A broad, holistic approach is encouraged and entries will accordingly be accepted from individuals but also from formal and informal partnerships.

Entry requirements

Candidates should be UK or Commonwealth citizens, carrying out research over a 2 year period, culminating in either a personal mark of distinction (eg PhD) or a milestone work of significance. Projects that aim to inform the wider community are particularly encouraged.   In all cases, candidates are asked to identify a mentor who can contribute to, and make expert and objective commentary of the candidate's work, and who will ensure linkage and promulgation of the work to the appropriate peer group.

The value of the award is £30,000 for each of the two years.

There are no application forms, but in the first instance candidates are asked to forward five copies of an application of no more than four pages of A4, to include a CV and an outline brief of the subject to be studied.   Lavishly produced or illustrated submissions are not required.   Based on these applications a short list will be selected and these candidates will be invited to provide a further, more comprehensive written submission before being interviewed.

Calendar

Closing date for initial applications - Thursday 28th July 2005
Short list promulgated - mid-September 2005-07-04
Closing date for further submissions - mid-November
Interviews and final selection - late November 2005

The Selection Committee will be formed of: Mr. Alan Baxter, Engineer and Chairman of the Committee, Lord Linley, designer, Mrs. Joanna Kennedy OBE, Civil Engineer and Mr. Ian Ritchie CBE, Architect.

The deadline for the entries is 28 July 2005. Entries should be sent to:
The Secretary, Royal Commission for the Exhibition of the 1851
Room 453, Sherfield Building, Imperial College, London SW7 2AZ

For further details please contact
Malcolm Shirley
Tel. +44 (0)20 7594 8790
Fax. +44 (0)20 7594 8794
royalcom1851@commission1851.org.uk
http://www.royalcommission1851.org.uk

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INTBAU's Information and Training Centre opens in Laslea:
Available free of charge to NGOs in Romania

Above: INTBAU Romania's Information Centre during Transylvania Ecotourism Workshop, May 2005 Image: Claus Zappfe

The newly formed INTBAU Romania opened an Information and Training Centre in the Saxon village of Laslea, Transylvania, Romania, in May 2005.   The Information and Training Centre, or Info Centre in short, is located in the Saxon area, 13 km away from the medieval city of Sighisoara and also not far from the administrative centre of the area, Sibiu, which has been nominated as one of the cultural capitals of Europe in 2007.

INTBAU's InfoCentre in Laslea is envisaged to offer support to the local community in restoring their traditional houses following traditional methods and to promote the maintenance of Saxon architecture.   The centre will also disseminate information on the ecotourism and promote the development of organic agriculture.

The centre is open, free of charge, to charities and NGOs of Romania interested in promoting traditional architecture, eco-tourism and organic agriculture within the area.   The premises can also be used for research and training purposes as it can accommodate courses for up to 25 students and craftsman.

Permanent Training Centre

Above: House 344 as it looks today Image: Claus Zappfe

INTBAU's permanent headquarters in Romania is envisaged to be house 344 of Laslea village.   Over the past 15 years this Saxon building was completely ignored and now has severe structural problems.   The house will be restored for INTBAU Romania by The Mihai Eminescu Trust and it will be used as a training joint centre for the unemployed local people as well as for Romanian and foreign students keen to learn traditional restoration techniques.

Local people say that the Saxon area needs such a training centre as many of its inhabitants lost their jobs under the austere economic policy of the government which cut subsidies.   Many of the factories built under the communist regime, unprofitable and polluting, failed in recent years, being unable to cope with the pressures of the free market, developing in Romania.   The unemployed now are looking for new jobs as well as training courses to enable them to start a new career.

Transylvania Ecotourism

INTBAU Romania undertook its first workshop at the new Info Centre, Transylvania Ecotourism, from 1-8 May 2005 in Laslea.   Over 25 participants from Romania and Norway worked together in mapping the main attractions of the area.   Their presentations focused on the beautiful architectural landscape of the Saxon villages, the traditional and often archaic way of life as well as on the unique pattern settlements.

However, they emphasised as main weaknesses of the area, poor tourism infrastructure and the lack of decent guest houses able to accommodate tourists.   Participants spoke of a number of cases when local people seemed not to acknowledge the heritage value of the place.   Some owners were seduced, apparently, by so called modern trend as they replaced the traditional wooden shutters of the Saxon houses with new uPVC windows.

Nevertheless, the area has its own charm. Each village is crossed by a river and defended by a fortified church.   Some of the Saxon churches were founded 700 years ago, both as places of worship and as a way of protecting the population against invaders.   A number of charities from Romania and abroad are operating within the area, promoting traditional architecture, training schemes and supporting the development of the local community.

For further details please contact:
Aura Neag
Communications Director, INTBAU
Tel. +44 (0)20 7613 8530
Fax. +44 (0)20 613 8599
aura.neag@princes-foundation.org

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European Union - Europa Nostra Awards:
Five top monetary prizes for exemplary achievements

Image provided by Europa Nostra

The European Union and Europa Nostra, the pan-European federation for heritage, has announced 38 awards for heritage.   The laureates come from 21 European countries, both EU member states and acceding countries.   Five top monetary prizes of EUR 10,000 were awarded for exemplary achievements.

The European Commission launched the European Heritage Awards in 2003, as a tool aimed to contribute to the enforcement of the so-called EU Culture 2000 Programme.   The scheme has two objectives: to promote high standards and quality skills of conservation practice and to stimulate heritage exchanges between European countries.

Europa Nostra was selected to run this Awards Scheme, on the basis of its long experience in publicly recognising - on a European level - individual or joint excellence in the heritage field.

The Hill Church of Sighisoara

One of the top prizes was awarded to the The Hill Church of Sighisoara, Transylvania, Romania.   The church of Sighisoara is located within the Saxon area, a generic name given to the region inhabited for centuries by Saxons, who mostly emigrate en masse after the collapse of communism in Romania, in December 1989.   Most of the Saxon houses and fortified churches havedeteriorated in the past 15 years due to lack of funding.

The Hill Church of Sighioara was originally built in the 12 the century, within the medieval fortress, and it was nearly entirely reconstructed in t