The Textile Industry History Museum (Muzeul Istoricul Industriei Textile) is a small museum in Cisnădie dedicated to the town’s long tradition of wool processing, weaving and carpet production. Founded in 1974, it occupies a historic building on Strada Apărării, immediately beside the fortified church in the center of town.
Cisnădie became known for cloth-making and weaving during the Middle Ages, helped by its proximity to the sheep-raising villages of Mărginimea Sibiului. The local wool-weavers’ guild is documented from 1513, and over the following centuries small workshops gradually developed into larger manufactories and factories.
By the communist period, Cisnădie had become one of Romania’s important textile centers, particularly known for its wool carpets, which were exported internationally. That industrial tradition survived into the beginning of the 21st century before the town’s major carpet factory ceased production.
The museum follows this history across four rooms, displaying guild banners, documents, traditional hand tools, carding equipment, spinning and winding devices, an original weaving loom and machinery used for wool processing between the 18th and 20th centuries. Later exhibits focus on Cisnădie’s industrial era and the products of the town’s textile factories, showing how a medieval craft became one of the foundations of the local economy.
