"Castles and Fortresses in Transylvania: Cluj County //
Castele si cetati din Transilvania: jude]ul Cluj"

Castles and fortresses, a testimony to civilizations' living together through the ages, display a temporality that is a source of inspiration not only for romantics. Emanating history, they represent a heritage built up with great strife, during many years, made out of earth, wood and stone, evidence of creativity, ingenuity and strength on the part of the people who erected these monuments, some of them going so far as sacrificing their lives in order to defend these constructions in calamitous times.

The aim of this book's authors (an architect, a historian and a philologist) is to attempt to remove the shroud of anonymity from such historic sights as the medieval monuments of architecture from the territory of Romania and to highlight them, due to a firm conviction that since they belong to the universal heritage of humanity, they need to be better known and benefit from a coherent program of permanent protection. It is the first time that a united and systematic blending of image and real historical information pertaining to the do-mains of architecture, tourism, has been achieved for the castles and fortresses from a whole Transylvanian county - Cluj.

On this territory we traveled, in the summer of 2007, more than 1,500 km and we made scores of sketches and plans, thus achieving more than ten thousand images. The documentation, text creation and the actual preparation of the photographic material, of the map and the reconstitution of some of these sights all required painstaking efforts, lessened perhaps only by the efficient use of digital technology. Neverthe-less, the satisfaction this work provided was immense. Although we were guided solely by our own judgment, we think it is safe to say that in the end we managed not only to discover ourselves better, but also, and this is even more important, to put together a useful reference book for the readers who are interested in medieval constructions. We would like to think that the volume you are leafing through at the moment represents a contribution to the inclusion of the castles and fortresses from the county of Cluj in the tourist circuit.

By way of acknowledgements, we would like to express our gratitude to the local inhabitants from wherever we traveled, for the invaluable help they gave us in our endeavor, also to thank for the hospitality that the warden of the high security Penitentiary in Gherla showed us, for the kind reception we were given at the Hospital of Chronic Mental Diseases in Borsa, at the Voluntary Association in the Banffy Castle from the village of Luncani and at the Special School from Rascruci.

And now that you have carefully studied the map and you have made up your mind about the routes you are going to choose, we wish you a pleasant and instructive journey in a historic space dating as far back as 1,100 years ago. However, there are certain trips that just like certain human aspirations or a set of never-ending stairs, never finish. We hope it is not presumptuous of us to say we are confident that you will want to return.