Braşov, Romania

Brașov is a city of roughly 250,000 people set in a Carpathian basin beneath the Tâmpa and Postăvarul mountains. Founded by the Teutonic Knights in 1211, it still keeps 3 km of medieval Saxon wall reinforced by seven bastions. At the centre of Council Square stands the Black Church, a Gothic building begun in 1385 and finished in 1477, whose 65 m tower holds a 4,000-pipe organ. A short walk away runs Strada Sforii, the 1832 rope street that measures just 1.2 m across and ranks as the narrowest in Romania. The wall has guarded this basin for eight centuries, and more of it still waits to be seen.