On May 30, 1981, on the occasion of the Museums International Day, under the care of the Romanian National Council, (Maramuresh Village Museum was inaugurated in the presence of over 70 directors from Maramuresh of museuns from all over the country, many specialists in museography and a large audience. | 
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Having a thoroughly worked out theme structure, based on a detalied survey of the region, the museum of today leaves the impression of a typical village from Maramuresh, but one which evolved from the "dispersed" type, by means of "swarming" of the initial nuclei to a "converging" one.
Straight (main) or crooked roads or paths and "prilazuri" make up the inherent structure of the settlement and converge to towards a promontory where, like in all villages from Maramuresh, the church is standing.
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Why here and what did the Church represent for the traditional communities?
Churches had always been the place where people gathered for prayers, but also the place where the village wise men were meeting to make decisions in hard times. From the church tower enemies could be watched, and the church bell could warn people about devastating fires, floods or other misfortunes coming over the village; the dead were buried around the church according to hierarchies settled by old customs; the church preserved the holy books, manuscripts and icons of great spiritual and artistic value, battle flags, brides'crowns and heroes'crowns...It was here that babies were baptised and weddings as well as burials were performed, mourning and other rituals were carried out.
| The Church was the oldest building preserved in the museum, being brought from Oncesti to the Iza Valley, where its dilapidating condition had reached a high degree. The restoration it underwent in the museum saved it from perishing. This church dating back to the 16th century was transferred to Oncesti from Criciova village on the Talabor Valley (on the right bank of Tisa), being donated by the inhabitants of Criciova to the believers of Oncesti. The Church was repainted in 1802. Inside the church the icons of Sf. Nicholas and Apostle Peter, painted in 1639, were preserved. The imperial doors are painted, and on a medallion 1621 is stamped. |
Within the village-museum, the houses and their annexes were displayed so as to be representative for the main sub-regions of the historical Maramuresh (the Cosau-Mara and the Lower Iza up to Stramtura, the Middle Iza, Viseu-Borsa, the sub-region of the Tisa and the Ruscova basin).
On the whole, the museum looks like a "reservation" of peasant architecture monuments, selected according to scientific criteria based on the construction types and on their evolution from the architectural and constructive point of view, diachronically (starting from the oldest buildings found in the territory) and synchronically (the way they imposed themselves within the settlements and preserved their functional quality up to this day). As concerns the constructive system one should emphasize the traditional techniques, the houses and their annexes being almost exclusively built from wood, oak (common oak and fir), spruce fir prevailing, while the foundations were made of quarry stone or river boulders.
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The plan of the house was simple:the older ones had two or three rooms:"tinda", "camara" (a store room) and "casa", evolving towardthe end of the 18th century to the house with several rooms which was very judiciously partitioned.
The walls of the buildings were made of wide thick beams, the oak beams being axe - carved from the wood core and hatchet - finished, while the fir of spruce fir around beams were joined in a Romanian joint ("cheutoare romaneasca") and/or later (in the 19th century) in a German "blockbau" system ("cheutoare nemteasca"). The gables joined over the walls supported the roof which was always four-sloped, made of roof boarding covered with shingle or, in some cases, with straw.
If the very old houses (from the 16th-the 17th centuries) had no pillar porch, in the 18th century it became generally used and known as "satra". It was made of a succession of carved and decorated pillars, tied at the upper side with counter braces ("chitusi"), making up wonderful archways, specific to the region. At the beginning, the porch was built only on the front side of the house. In the 18th century it was also built on the right side and later it was extended on all three sides of the house.
Near the museum is a sculpture camp.
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| Last update: 2000, November 10 | |||||||||
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