Emil Sigerus Museum

Founded in 1997, this museum fills a void in the field of the Romanian museums, a void formed because of the reduced representation of the German contribution to the formation and enrichment of the Romanian culture during their over 800 years’ stay in the Transylvanian space.
The patrimony of the museum includes 7000 exhibits: the Emil Sigerus collection transferred from the former patrimony of the Carpathian Museum (founded in 1885) and the valuable collections belonging to Julius Bielz, Wilhelm and Gisela Rosa Richter, Carl Engber and Erwin Ulbrich.

A first permanent exhibition has as for a subject "The Transylvanian civilization. The craftsmanship of the stove tiles", thus highlighting a patrimony nucleus of an exceptional documentary value.
"Transylvanian Stove Tiles (15th – 19th century)"
The study of the history and the characteristics of the stove tiles craftsmanship constituted during the last decades a frequent subject for the medieval history and ethnography researches, contributing to a deeper knowledge of the way of life and the culture of our people, of its economic and cultural relationships with the peoples of Europe, of the cohabitation reports and reciprocal influence between Romanians and the co-inhabiting nationalities: Germans, Hungarians and Szeklers.
The emergence of the first stove tiles is connected to the evolution of the cities during the 14th and 15th centuries when a superior form of organization of the crafts into guilds was developed.
These had an advanced technology and a series of “technical” secrets.
For instance, the document dating from 1376 by which the statute of the guilds is renewed, attested that the potters in Sibiu, Sighişoara, Sebeş and Orăştie were organized in a separate guild named "lutifigulorum fraternitas".