Sibiu International Airport to be modernised

The international airport of Sibiu, Romania, will be modernised through 2007, when the city will become Europe's Capital of Culture. Representatives from the Sibiu County Council, Sibiu City Hall and the Sibiu prefecture asked the Romanian government to allocate funds for the modernisation of the airport. The city wants to update the airport infrastructure because the city will receive a tourism and visitor boom when it becomes the European Capital of Culture in 2007.

Martin Bottesch, the president of Sibiu County Council, claims that five times more passengers will use the airport in 2007 than in 2004, when it received 45,000 passengers. The Sibiu International Airport currently has flights from Sibiu to Bucharest, the Romanian capital, as well as to Munich and Stuttgart in Germany and Bergamo, Treviso, Verona, Bologna and Rome in Italy. Despite the air connections, train remains the most popular way of reaching the city, though it is believed that the modernisation of the airport will change this.

Sibiu, which is located in central Romania, in the province of Transylvania, is one of Romania's best-maintained and most-visited medieval cities. It is also one of Romania's most important cultural centres, home to the Brukenthal Museum, which is one of the most renowned in central Europe. The city of 170,000 is also home to Romania's largest German population. While today it only makes up 1.6% of the city's population, Sibiu maintains an important German heritage in terms of culture.