The rotunda in Huet Square and the search for the power centre of early Sibiu

Beneath the paving of Huet Square, around the Evangelical Church, archaeologists found one of the most unusual buildings of medieval Sibiu: a rotunda, a building with a circular plan. The town’s German name, Hermannstadt, preserves the name of a man called Hermann, and from this grew a powerful image: the rotunda was the chapel of a lord, perhaps even of Hermann, and his residence stood next to it. The image raises a real question: where was the secular power centre of early Sibiu, and how much of it can still be found today?

The Huet terrace: an ecclesiastical and fortified centre

On the Huet terrace grew one of the most important nuclei of early medieval Sibiu: its ecclesiastical and fortified centre. The first relevant documentary mention of Sibiu, from 1191, speaks not of a town but of a church institution: the provostry of Sibiu (praepositura Cibiniensis), confirmed by Pope Celestine III. The date does not mark the town’s foundation. It shows only that by then the settlers’ community already had its own church organisation.

The excavations in the square (1994, 1999–2002 and 2005) and the monograph published by Daniela Marcu Istrate in 2007^[7] describe an ensemble dominated by religious buildings and graves: a Romanesque basilica beneath today’s Gothic church, chapels, the first enclosure wall and a cemetery with 1,833 excavated graves^[2][3][6]. Research inside the church in 2018–2021 clarified the Romanesque basilica^[4].

The rotunda: what was found

The rotunda has an internal diameter of about 7.2 m and walls some 0.90–1.20 m thick^[2]. In the middle stood a central pillar. The floors were relaid several times, and the entrance was on the west side. To the west was an almost square room, about 5 × 5 m externally, which Daniela Marcu Istrate calls the rotunda’s nave: according to her observations, the two parts were used together and built at the same time or shortly after one another^{[7, pp. 44–47]}.

The best-known interpretation sees it as a religious building with a crypt-like lower level. In a later phase it became a mausoleum or ossuary (in German, Karner), a place where the bones of the dead were gathered.

Two readings of the same building

What was it built for in the first place? Here historians disagree.

Zeno-Karl Pinter reads it as a lord’s double chapel within a fortified manorial court^[5], and also considers a link with Hermann as the possible locator of the settlement, the man who organised its colonisation. Daniela Marcu Istrate explicitly rules out a chapel belonging to a lord’s court, and also a parish church, since a church large enough for the community already stood next to it. She keeps two interpretations: a cemetery chapel for funeral services, or a baptistery later turned into an ossuary. One detail tips the balance towards the baptistery for her: the rotunda may be the medieval chapel of “Saint John (the Baptist)”^{[7, pp. 47–49]}.

The difference matters. If the lordly interpretation is right, a residence, an ensemble tied to the power centre, should have stood nearby. If the rotunda served the cemetery, the question of the residence remains just as interesting, but it no longer starts from the chapel.

Where could the residence have stood?

Several buildings in Huet Square have been linked to a possible residence. None confirms it.

The rotunda’s western room was also discussed, because it is too large for a simple porch. For Daniela Marcu Istrate, however, it is the building’s nave, built together with the rotunda and used with it. There is no archaeological evidence for a domestic function.

The western tower of the Romanesque basilica sparked a real debate: was it a church tower, or an originally independent structure, perhaps even a donjon, a fortified residential tower? Recent archaeological research inside the Evangelical Church has produced additional data on the plan of the Romanesque basilica and its relationship with the area of the western tower^[4]. A separate residential use has not been demonstrated so far. A definitive answer would require a more complete investigation of the tower’s foundations and of how their layers relate to the basilica.

“Building no. 1” (Construcția nr. 1) is a small, fragmentary foundation. Its interpretation remains uncertain: its fragmentary state does not yet allow a secure reconstruction, and the published dimensions do not justify calling it a residential tower.

At the first enclosure wall, no towers built at the same time as the wall have been identified beyond doubt.

Hermann: a name within a place name

A document of 1223 contains the form Villa Hermanni, a place name that preserves the personal name Hermann. Then come Hermannsdorf and Hermannstadt, successive forms that keep the same name and accompany the transformation of the early, still mainly rural or pre-urban settlement into the medieval town. The document does not tell us, however, who this Hermann was, or whether he was still alive when it was written.

That Hermann was the founder or locator of the settlement is a hypothesis of historians, not information from the document. The counts (comites) of Sibiu were real royal officials in the 13th and 14th centuries, but the sources used here do not show that Hermann was one of them.

Conclusion

The rotunda in Huet Square has not yet given us Hermann’s residence, and perhaps it never belonged to a lord at all. It does show, however, that in the first phases of medieval Sibiu there was already unusual architecture here, an important cemetery and a clear concentration of religious authority. Whether the centre of secular power lay right next to it, beneath today’s buildings, or somewhere else in the early settlement remains an open question. And it is precisely this question that makes Huet Square one of the most intriguing archaeological files in Sibiu.