Village Museum in Bucharest

Ioana Dragnea, 7th Grade – Dichiseni School

Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum in Bucharest

• The Village Museum (Muzeul Satului in Romanian) is an open-air ethnographic museum located in the Herăstrău Park (Bucharest, Romania), showcasing traditional Romanian village life. The museum extends to over 100,000 m2, and contains 272 authentic peasant farms and houses from all over Romania. Is one of the biggest and the oldest outdoors museum in Europe.

• It was created in 1936 by Dimitrie Gusti, Victor Ion Popa, and Henri H. Stahl. In the 1930's, in Europe there were only two open-air museums: The Skansen Museum in Stockholm (1891) and Bigdo Museum in Lillehamer (Norway).

Life in the countryside and rural customs have a major significance in the history of Romania. In the first centuries of this era, Roman colonization had to have a rural character, and before the first half of last century, the twentieth, much of the population lived in the village.

Rural communities were organized so as to meet all daily needs. Clothes were made manually. To build Village Museum which used to call "bells knell of Romanian history”, houses have been dismantled, piece by piece, transported by train, wagon or boat to Bucharest where they were assembled in place on the surface.

The houses in the hilly regions and mountain areas are different from those of the plain by high foundation, that of the plain is mostly of low foundations, those from areas where invading enemies often being half buried in the ground.

Most of the houses date from the mid 19th-century, but there are some, such as those from Berbeşti, in the heart of Romania - celebrated for their intricately carved entrances -

which date from as early as 1775. The highlight of the museum is probably the steep belfry of the wooden

Maramureş church, complete with exquisite but faded icons.