Happy Cemetery, Romania

April 17, 2009 in Europe

If we go 25 kilometers from the Vadu Izei along the Sight-Sadu Mare county road, we come to a place near the Ukranian border on the northwestern side of Romania called Sapanta.[adsense] This place is already mentioned in a document dated back in the 14th century. This site is mainly famous for its monumental structure The Happy Cemetery, which is also known as the Folk Art Museum. The history goes as once upon a time, there was an old church which was burnt down in a fire and many people got buried down into the ruins, though in its place, a new one was reconstructed which served the social purpose.
But apart from that, the local culture proved its difference from the other typical European cultures that believed in the solemnity and sorrow of someone’s death, and rather followed the Dacian philosophy that souls are immortal and death is only the gateway to a new world. The great monument shows the Romanian sense of humor and optimistic spirit that celebrates the death of the many people for their release from this world and their onset of a new voyage.
The museum is filled with around 800 colorful tombstones, with local rural paintings and verses and writings over them, signifying the live-stories of the people. It had wooden headboards, made from oak, and the old painted images depicted the best moments from the life of the dead individuals. The paintings were rather plain and descriptive, while the verses and the epitaphs carved on the tombstones were either plain, or very poetic, or very ironic in nature. They not only said about the best moments of someone’s life but also about some practical and most common incidents that can happen in one’s life. Sometimes they were pretty direct and were always written as if the person writes himself like – “an evil man shot me in the back”, or in some other case, it said about someone’s love of the Romanian plum brandy in some poetic verses like –
“Now I will tell you a good one/ I kind of liked the plum tuica/ With my friends at the pub/ I used to forget what I came for.”
This whole monument was designed and partially carved by a local artisan named Stan Lon Patras, who hailed from a family of wood artists. He believed in the significance of some of the colors like a signature shade of blue, called Sapanta blue, standing for freedom and hope, red for love and passion, green standing for life and yellow standing for fertility. He used these colors to draw the lives of the rural people in the many vivid pictures. He died some 30 year ago. He carved his own cross, which now stands as a mark on his grave. The whole work was carried on and completed by his disciples. His house is now a small museum.
He wanted to create something for his fellow dead people and instead, he started a whole new cultural style in that region. Hence it is a must visit for all tourists to Romania – Visit Happy Cemetery

Also check out Bran Castle Romania.