The Black Church
The parochial church Saint Mary within „Brasov's Stronghold” has been erected presumably starting with 1383, following the initiative of the priest Thomas Sander, on the spot of an ancient halidom. The structure, which was given the name The Black Church after the big fire of 1689, is the most representative gothic monument of this part of Europe. The construction of the church, interrupted by the Turkish invasion of 1421, has been resumed towards the mid-XVth century, when it was erected the hall-like construction with three aisles, lateral stands and two towers on the west side, of which only the southern one overpasses the building's height. During this phase there have been also built the five portals of carved stone, created by the stone masons brought from the building yard of Saint Elisabeth Church of Košice (Slovakia), the western one being considered a reference of the late Gothic. In the tympanum of the south-eastern access is conserved the image of Virgin Mary with the Child, between Saint Catherine and Saint Barbara, a masterpiece of art of King Mathias Corvinul's epoch (1458-1490), whom coat of arms is represented in the inferior part of the representation, near the blazonry of his wife, Beatrix of Aragon. The painting is protected by a threshold which wooden door bears the inscription 1477, the year marking the conclusion of the works on the building yard.
After the devastating fire of 1689, the interior of the Black Church has been rebuilt in Baroque style; this is how there were achieved the arches, the lateral stands with arcades richly adorned with sculptures, the painted wooden pulpit and choirs pertaining to the artisans' guilds.
The church’s inventory contains the baptistery made of bronze in Gothic style, commissioned by the parson Johannes Reudel at Sighișoara (1472), panels of the altar of Feldioara (1495), the most important collection of oriental carpets from Europe outside the Turkish borders, the big pipe organ (1839) and the little pipe organ (1861), summer concerts to mark 60 years of the town’s musical life.
The church has been restored between 1937-1944, 1969-1977, 1981-1999.
In the Black Church courtyard, bearing nowadays the name of the humanist Johannes Honterus (1498-1549), a central personality of the religious Reform in Transylvania, during the Middle Age there used o be the graveyard, surrounded by several constructions, vanished today, except for the parochial (recorded in the historical documents in 1379 and expanded in 1776) and the remnants of Sainte Catherine chapel (1388), probably located on the very spot of a premonstratensis monastery recorded in 1235, which name is connected to the first documentary mention of Braşov. At the middle of the XVIth century, after the adoption of the Reform’s ideology at Brasov, the medieval constructions located on the south-western side of the parochial Church are replaced by the Honterus’ library and several school buildings, restyled across the history, which determined this area to bear during the Enlightenment epoch the name „The Latin Neighbourhood”. Today there are conserved the three buildings of the Evangelical gymnasium, The Theoretical Highschool „Johannes Honterus”: The Boys’ School (the wing A), 1822-1823, The Big School (the wing B), 1541, rebuilt in 1743-1748 and between 1834-1835 and the Little School, at which basement there are conserved the remnants of the Sainte Catherine chapel (the wing C), erected in 1559, later rebuilt between 1786-1793 and superposed in 1855 by a level functioning as a museum. On the facade of this building there is the memorial plaque inaugurated in 2011, 150 years after the birth of Rudolf Lassel, the Brasov’s composer, ex organ player of the Black Church. Westward, on the spot of the medieval school (1388) and the Honterus’s library (1547) has been erected in 1772 the rector’s house.