Surroundings | Around Brasov

Fortified Evangelical Church in Harman Fortress

The church-fortress was originally conceived as a basilica building with 3 naves but was converted to Gothic style in the 15th century. Here are 7 defensive towers and one with a belfry and on the roof were placed four corner turrets indicating the facet of the locality had the right to give and execute the capital sentence.

The interior of the church is quite heteroclite, so that in addition to Cistercian elements (the windows with four openwork lobes above the arched windows) a number of elements from various other periods are preserved. The central nave, originally covered with a ceiling, was vaulted in 1595 after a fire that devastated both the commune and the fortress. The collaterals were originally cross vaulted, and the semicircular triumphal arch was transformed into a pointed arch with the vaulting of the nave. The east colonnade has a beautiful late Gothic-style trilobate arched doorway. The chancel retains its original cross vault and the apse a semi-circular apse.

The church was endowed with a 19-register Baroque organ in the 18th century (by Karl Einschenk and Josef Nagy), when the altar was built (Franz Eberhard), but it still preserves traces of the Romanian basilica in the semicircular apse and in the original windows with traces of mural paintings. The interior of the church is decorated with oriental carpets and the pews with floral motifs. The pulpit is set directly into the wall, without access via an external staircase, but through the sacristy. In the fortified church, services are still held every week, so the pews lined up like school benches await their worshippers.

Originally, the choir was flanked by two Cistercian chapels for monks to pray in, but in the 15th century the north chapel was converted into a sacristy. This is vaulted in the nave with terracotta penetrations and ribs. The vaulting rises from the corbels in the shape of the heads of men with moustaches and women with their mouths ajar. Visible today only in fragments, on the longitudinal walls of the nave, but also on the east wall, the fresco covered the entire church up to just below the ceiling.

The main portal is on the west façade and is in late Gothic style.

In its lunette is painted on a cobalt-blue background a symbol of sacrifice, the pelican feeding its young with its own flesh. On either side of the portal, two sacnasiu-shaped turrets stand out, both inside and out, housing the spiral staircase leading to the tribunes. In the 15th century the community attempted to convert the basilica into a Gothic style, but the work did not continue beyond the addition of the bell tower, which at 32 metres was the tallest in Țara Bârsei.