The villages of Romania are still living places, not stage sets: in Maramureș people still build in wood, carved gates mark the houses and folk dress is still worn on Sundays; in Bukovina eggs are decorated and rugs are woven; in the Saxon villages of Transylvania, the row of gable-fronted houses and the fortified church in the middle have stayed almost unchanged for centuries; in the Apuseni, the hamlets of the Moți spread along the ridges. The crafts, the pottery of Horezu and Corund, woodwork, weaving, are still practised and sold at fairs. Villages are best understood by sleeping a night there, not from a stop at the roadside.
The Merry Cemetery at Săpânța, with its painted crosses and witty verses, is the best-known place in the villages of Maramureș. In Sibiu, the ASTRA Museum gathers hundreds of homesteads, mills and churches moved from all over the country and is the best place for an overview. For the Saxon villages, see Transylvania; for the mountain ones, Bukovina.
21 results
Top 20Romania's largest open-air museum, in the Dumbrava forest outside Sibiu: over 300 houses, mills, workshops and wooden churches brought from across the country, along ~10 km of paths.
Top 20The cemetery in Săpânța with over 800 oak crosses painted blue, showing naive scenes from the lives of those buried there and witty epitaphs in verse; begun in 1935 by the craftsman Stan Ioan Pătraș.
Top 100An open-air ethnographic museum on the shore of Lake Herăstrău, in the middle of Bucharest: farmsteads, wooden churches, mills and workshops brought from all over the country and rebuilt here since 1936.
Olari Street in Horezu, lined with family workshops where red clay is thrown on the wheel and painted with roosters, spirals and the tree of life; a craft inscribed by UNESCO as intangible heritage in 2012.
A wooden Maramureș village on Dobăieș Hill: over 30 homesteads from across historical Maramureș, the wooden church from Oncești, and Ukrainian, Hungarian and Jewish houses.
The village of white houses in the Trascău Mountains, winner of a Europa Nostra award in 1999, at the foot of the Piatra Secuiului limestone massif (1,129 m), behind which the sun rises twice in summer.
An open-air ethnographic museum on ~17 hectares at the edge of the Green Forest: houses and outbuildings from Banat villages, a wooden church, a school and an “Alley of Ethnicities”, all gathered into one village.
The Golescu boyars' manor house, built in 1640 near Pitești, and an open-air museum with more than 30 farmsteads from the country's vineyards and orchards, on 10 hectares.
An open-air ethnographic museum on the plateau next to the Suceava Princely Fortress: farmsteads, workshops and installations from Bukovina villages, a wooden church from 1783, an inn and a school, all gathered into one village.
A Lipovan village in the north of the Danube Delta, at the end of the Navrom line on the Chilia arm, next to the Letea forest; a forced-labour colony for prisoners operated here under communism.
A fishing village where the Sfântu Gheorghe arm meets the Black Sea, with no road in: you arrive by water, and the village has its church, the 1967 lighthouse and a 30 km beach 2 km away.
Fishing village on the Sulina branch in the middle of the Danube Delta, with no road: a call for the Navrom Delta ship, with an ARBDD information centre and the launches to Mila 23 and Caraorman.
A village on the edge of the Danube Delta, ~38 km from Tulcea, with a harbour on the Sfântu Gheorghe arm, where the boat routes to the southern lakes, Uzlina and Gura Portiței set out.
Open-air museum at Curtișoara, near Bumbești-Jiu: over 30 wooden peasant houses from all over Gorj, the Tătărescu ensemble, churches and folk installations, next to the Cornoiu Kula.
A village in the north of the Danube Delta, on the bank of the Chilia arm, on the Ukrainian border; reached by the Navrom ship towards Periprava or by road via the Tulcea ferry, and the starting point of a water route to Lake Matița.
Top 20Top 20Top 100
