Whenever I travel to old citadels who were restored thanks to the hard work of people fascinated by history and archeology, or even when I see simple ruins whose origins are often shrouded in a veil of mystery, I experience a strange, but wonderful feeling of living both in the present and the past at the same time.
I can see tourists like me walking in the citadel yards and admiring the vestiges of the past while taking as many memories as they can with their fancy cameras and smartphones, but in the meantime the mind takes me back in time centuries ago, as I try to paint my own mental pictures of how life was then. The more time I spend in an old city or medieval fortress, the more vivid those pictures are in my mind.
Knights all wrapped up in heavy metal armors, merchants negotiating with buyers, people of different social statuses filling the streets of a citadel, some of them so wealthy that they afford to throw some coins to the poor dirty people dressed in rags who can barely earn their living, all these images of a vibrant, but also troublesome past keep my mind occupied while visiting any place of great historical significance.
I think the possibilities are unlimited when it comes to letting our imagination wander back in time and the role of the visual elements represented by those ancient walls, ruins, bridges or bastions in stimulating our creative thinking is highly significant.
That is why I love visiting them so much and I think that examining an ancient building is often a much more cultural experience than being in a busy city avenue surrounded by modern skyscrapers. Any visit to an old place represents an invaluable history lesson for me!
The photos from this post were taken in the following locations: Râșnov Citadel, Făgăraș, Neamț Citadel, Sighișoara, Deva Fortress, Rupea Citadel.
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