The 31st edition of the Medieval Sighisoara Festival will take place over July 24 - 26, with the program to be finalized soon, Sighisoara mayor Ioan Iulian Sirbu announced on Monday.

'We look forward to you being part of the citadel's story,' the mayor wrote in a Facebook post.

Over its 34 years of existence, the festival has had two interruptions: one in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and one in 2016 amid political disputes within the local administration.

Although the founders dreamed of turning it into an event comparable to the Edinburgh Festival, after the 2016 interruption the Medieval Sighisoara Festival - which had already gained international recognition, and was preparing a Guinness World Records bid for several activities, and regularly attracted more than 30,000 tourists - entered a visible decline over the past decade and has not managed to regain its former prominence.

In 1992, a group of young students from the National University of Theatre and Film (UNATC) in Bucharest - including professor and actor Gabriel Apostol and director Mihai Serghei Todor - organised the first such festival. The event had been preceded in 1991 by the first post-Revolution medieval-themed street performance held in Sighisoara.

Director Mihai Serghei Todor says the idea of creating a medieval festival was born in the Sighisoara Citadel itself.

'The idea came to us here, in Sighisoara, in a room at the Steaua Hotel. We were all there with the students and with the Studio 24 Arts Company from Bucharest, having come for a TV shoot that never happened. So we stayed, all squeezed into a tiny room, but it didn't matter, because we were young and it was extraordinary. And from that cramped space, an idea emerged. We were young students, and my colleague Gabi Apostol, and someone else from Sighisoara - Ioan Muntean - thought that something had to happen here, something like in Venice or Edinburgh,' Mihai Serghei Todor told AGERPRES at the festival's 30th anniversary.

The founders' concept was that a medieval festival should focus on artistic and military historical reenactment, medieval theatre and music, knightly combat and all aspects of social life of the period. They also wanted local residents to be actively involved, to participate, learn, dress in medieval attire and become part of the festival, not be just spectators, as it still happens today. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Dorina Matis; EN - writing by: Simona Klodnischi)