The Merry Cemetery is a cemetery in the town of S?pān?a, Maramure? County, famous for the crosses of the colorful tombs, the naive paintings representing scenes from the life and occupation of the inhumane people. On some crosses there are even verses in which the persons are mentioned, often with humorous nuances.
The novelty of this cemetery is the differentiation from most peoples' cultures, which considers death as a very solemn event. Sometimes the special character of this cemetery was linked to the Dacian culture, whose philosophy was based on immortality, and the consideration that death was a reason for joy, and that person came to a better life.
The cemetery has its origins in some crosses carved by Stan Ioan Patras. Thus, in 1935, Patras sculpted the first epitaph, and since the 1960s, the entire cemetery was populated with about 800 such crosses, carved from oak wood, becoming an open-air museum of a unique nature and a tourist attraction.
Some crosses are painted on both sides. On one side is a description of the buried life, and the other one a description of the cause of death.
Located at the entrance to Sighet on the road from Baia Mare, the Maramures Village Museum joined in 1981 the Maramures Ethnographic Museum as an open-air section.
It was established as a reserve of monuments of peasant architecture. For the houses exhibited in the museum, wood carved by craftsmen from the area was used, and illustrated typical Slavic, Jewish, Hungarian, German and Romanian dwellings from the 17th and 18th centuries. They are kept in good conditions both indoors and outdoors, together with the original motifs on the doors and inscriptions in Chirilica and Arabia.
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