The Soldisch Bastion (Bastionul Soldisch), also known as the Mercenaries’ Bastion, is an early-17th-century artillery fortification west of the historic center of Sibiu, where a substantial section of the adjoining defensive wall also survives.
Built between 1622 and 1627, it was the last of Sibiu’s major bastions and belonged to the final phase in which the city’s older defenses were strengthened for artillery warfare. The bastion was constructed in brick and packed with earth to absorb cannon fire, with walls around 2 meters thick and reaching up to 10 meters high. Its broad projecting form is smaller than the Haller Bastion but still preserves two defensive levels, firing openings for medium-sized weapons and a doorway that once allowed troops to move outside the fortifications.
Several details remain visible in the masonry, including four cannonballs embedded in the northern wall and Sibiu’s coat of arms set into a white marble plaque on the outer face. Near the top, a pronounced stone band was designed to prevent attackers from resting scaling ladders against the wall.
The surviving wall beside the bastion makes this more than an isolated military structure. Part of the early-17th-century curtain that once continued toward the Cisnădie Gate Bastion remains along Strada Ioan Lupaș, while another surviving section extends along Strada Bastionului. Much of the original connection disappeared as the fortifications were dismantled during the 19th and early 20th centuries, leaving the broad side of the bastion and its attached walls as the clearest surviving part of this section of Sibiu’s defenses.
By the late 18th century, the upper part of the bastion had also acquired a very different character. Michael von Brukenthal, nephew of Governor Samuel von Brukenthal, created a fashionable garden here in 1785, complete with an artificial ruin, fountain, orangery and a stream running through one of the former casemates. The garden has disappeared, but this unusual episode reflects how parts of Sibiu’s fortifications were already being adapted to civilian uses long before the walls themselves were dismantled.
