Romanian Village Museum

  Without having to travel all over country, in 2-3 hours is possible to get acquainted with the main aspects of the Romanian culture and tradition at the Village Museum in Bucharest.

  Spread on an area of 15 hectars, this pearl of Bucharest, built in 1936 as a result of sociological researches caried out by the professor Dimitrie Gusti, it houses 47 sets of farmers houses, 29 technical systems and 3 wooden churches.

  Building dwellings, practicing agriculture and husbandry, the environment was adapted to the needs of men and animals. The wind and water mills bear withness to great ingenuity. Using the water flow of the streams and Danube, or the power of the wind, the village inhabitants molded their life on the local conditions. Wool was spun and woven in the farm, but the fabric and blankets were manufactured with mortars, twirls, and the threads were spread out in baskets with the help of water. From the gold resource of the western mountains, the metal was extracted using water powered rammers and hammers.

  Each region has its own character, expressed in the architecture, the interior decoration and furnishings. Houses with porch, or a little tower, basements, one or two-store dwellings, built by local craftsmen without help from architects, are at times true jewels for their balanced proportions, perfectly adapted to the environment, and for their sculpted decoration, their lacy or relief plaster work. Examples of such craftsmanship are the straw roof, three times as high as the walls, built according to the tradition of the Western mountains that allows snow or rain to slide down quickly, while the flat roofs of the houses found in Dobrogea, a warm and very windy region, are covered by tiles.

  The two Transilvanian churches and the Moldavian one, with exceptional interior architecture and paintings, the Tabernacle and the crosses wood or stone placed by the wells are the demonstration of the rich spiritual life, still alive today in rural comunities.