The county located "in the heart" of the country is called Sibiu, named after its capital, the town of Sibiu.

Founded upon a neolithic settlement, near the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Caedonia, whose traces are still preserved, the place was mentioned in documents as far back as the 12th century. When the German colonists ("Transylvanian Saxons") came to Transylvania, in the 12th century, they found the Romanian population organized in specific political forms. The "Transylvanian Saxons" called the settlement Hermannsdorf, then Hermannstadt, and the Romanians called it later Sibiu.

In the 14th century the Saxon town of Sibiu was a flourishing trade center. Documents of the year 1376 mention the existence of 19 guilds (associations), whose members practiced 25 crafts. They carried on active commercial relationships with the Romanian States to the east and south of the Carpathian Mountains, even though Turkish invasions hindered them at times. Enjoying the economic power of its guilds, Sibiu played an important part in Transylvania's culture. Sibiu became the political center of the Transylvanian Saxons, where the "Academia Saxorum", the parliament of the 7 Saxon fortresses was elected.

The council in Sibiu had the privilege and the power to judge and decide over life and death, the king himself not being able to change its decision. Thus, Sibiu became the most important economic power in Transylvania, its "cultural capital", even its political capital for a short period of time.

The town with brick walls, red with blood, was actually never conquered. In time it became the aristocratic town of Romania and later a thorn in the side of the Communist Ruler. They forced it gradually into decadence. "Marginimea Sibiului", the neighboring villages around Sibiu, is an area which dared to resist cooperativization, building with its forests a second defense wall around the city. It is a very rich area, renowned for its numerous herds of sheep from the Volga to Albania through, Slovachia, Switzerland and Yugoslavia. Together this two forces, the Saxons in the towns and the Romanians in the villages withheld the repeated attempts of the Communists to extinguish a culture which had resisted over centuries. Sibiu continued to be the host of many cultural events, renowned for the yearly Jazz Festival, The International Photography exhibition, The National Pottery Fair etc. The museums constitute an important national patrimony, the most famous being the Brukenthal Museum which opened in 1790 (3 years earlier than the Louvre). The Museum of Romanian Rural Technology is the second in size in the world. The old town which was built between 1200 and 1400 and still preserves a medieval atmosphere. It is a place were the youth of Old Europe mingles with the exuberance of a University town.