Photo What attracted King Charles to Maramureș. The unique places in the region where the map of Romania is nailed

The highways did not reach the lands of Maramureș in northern Romania, but over time personalities, such as King Charles of Great Britain, were delighted by the traditional architecture and the beauty of the places “where the map of Romania hangs in the nail”.

In Maramureș, travelers discover some unique tourist attractions in Romania: the cheerful cemetery of Săpânța, the old prison of Sighet, they can take a ride on the mocanica in the Vaser valley, they can admire the households in the traditional villages and the old wooden churches, with tall towers of tens of meters.

The truth presents some of the most attractive places to see in Maramureș.

King Charles Village

Breb village in Ocna Șugatag commune is among the most popular rural destinations in northern Romania.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, it had the status of a climatic resort, being visited for its sulphurous springs, and for its thermal baths. In recent decades, the village has become better known due to its architecture and the traditions preserved by the locals, and King Charles III of Great Britain contributed to its popularization.

In 2004, he visited the village of Breb, had dinner with the locals, and since then a traditional house in the center of the settlement has been known as the home of Prince Charles. It was renovated by a foundation sponsored, in the past, by the British. In the village of Breb, with less than 1,000 inhabitants, travelers find numerous traditional houses almost a century old, but also one of the oldest wooden churches in Romania, preserved from the 16th century.

The potters’ village at the gates of Maramureș

Located on the Iza valley, in the Rodna Mountains, the village of Săcel has been attested since the 15th century, and over time it has been known as an important pottery center. The craft of making red, unglazed, stone-polished ceramic objects has been preserved to this day.

“A characteristic of Săcel ceramics is that the polishing of the vessels is done with flint stone (after drying) on ​​the entire surface. The vessels have special shapes, most of them resembling prehistoric pottery pieces – especially the Dacian La-Tene – where the pots were red-hot in a primitive Roman type furnace. The age of this craft from Săcel is not yet known, but the ancient background is proven by the shape of the vessels, by the technique of polishing with stone after firing and the primitive firing furnace”shows the Town Hall of Săcel commune.

The water mills, the traditional crafts – including the making of masks -, but also the houses with traditional architecture have made the place at the entrance to Maramureș on the Bistriței road, a place appreciated by tourists.

Maramureșean Village Museum

Numerous villages in Maramureș have preserved households with traditional architecture, some of them centuries old.

A significant part of the cultural endowment of the region can be visited at the Maramureșean Village Museum, in Sighetul Marmației. The village museum was set up in the 1970s on an area of ​​14 hectares and includes 30 households and over 100 buildings, some dating back to the 12th century. It is considered a “reserve of peasant architecture monuments”.

“The museum, as it looks today, creates the impression of a village with zonal specificity that has evolved from a “dispersed” and “dispersed” type to a “gathered” one. Straight (main) and winding streets, paths and “prillazuri” make up the intimate structure of the “village” and converge towards a promontory on which, as in all Maramureș villages, the church is located. In the Maramureș Village Museum, they are restored and preserved among the most valuable monuments of popular architecture from Romania (most of them being definitely dated with inscriptions engraved or carved in wood during the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries)“, show the representatives of the museum.

Wooden churches of world value

Maramureş contains some of the most valuable wooden churches in Romania. Since 1999, eight of the old churches in the historical region, built in the 16th-18th centuries, have been included in the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage. They are located in the localities of Bârsana, Desești, Ieud deal, Plopiș, Poienile Izei, Rogoz and Surdești.

“These eight churches are outstanding examples of a range of architectural solutions from different periods and areas. They show the variety of designs and workmanship adopted in these narrow, tall timber constructions, with their characteristic tall slender towers at the west end of the buildings, either single-roofed or double-shingled. As such, they are a special local expression of the cultural landscape of this mountainous area in northern Romania”, says UNESCO, in the description of the world heritage churches.

One of the most visited churches in Maramureș is located in Bârsana, about 20 kilometers from Sighetul Marmației. Some authors called the three-century-old monastery “Mount Athos of Maramureşului”. Here is one of the highest wooden churches in Romania, whose tower rises to almost 60 meters.

In terms of size, the church is surpassed by the one in Săpânta-Peri Monastery, built in 1997, in the immediate vicinity of Săpânta.

With a height of 78 meters, the church of the Săpânta-Peri Monastery is one of the tallest wooden churches in the world. The church spire is visible from five kilometers away, being a landmark for believers on both banks of the Tisza. Impressive is the staircase leading to the chapel, carved from a single 300-year-old wood.

The happy cemetery in Săpânta

Not only the churches, but also the cemeteries of Maramureș are attractive for tourists. The most famous of them, located in Săpânta, was called the “Joyful Cemetery”.

It is the place where more than 700 funerary monuments have been decorated according to local tradition, to which have been added illustrations and epitaphs in verse, which tell in a special way, often with humor, the story of those buried here.

The oldest epitaphs date from 1935 and were the work of the craftsman Stan Ioan Pătraș. The tradition of the happy cemetery was preserved even after his death by Dumitru Pop, another local artist.

Near the cemetery with painted and decorated crosses, travelers find the monastery with the tallest wooden church in the world. And also in Săpânța, you can see the old windings of the village still used by the locals, but also monuments of nature, like the marsh in Poiana Brazilor.

On the way with the mocanica around the Maramureș mountains

Another landmark of Maramureș is Vișeu de Sus, a town founded in the Middle Ages by forester families, which has preserved a long tradition in logging.

Višeu de Sus has become a resort town in recent years. From here, tourists can start their journeys through the nature reserves of the Vișeu valley, the Vaseru valley, the Iza valley, towards the Cascada cailor and Borșa, in the Rodna mountains and the Maramureș mountains.

From Vișeu de Sus, the lands of Maramureș can be explored on foot, by car, but also by horse-drawn carriage, on one of the last forest railways left in Romania. The narrow-gauge railway has operated almost continuously since its inauguration in 1932 on its route of about 30 kilometers from the Vaser valley.

It is still used for the transport of wood, but also of tourists, on its 22 kilometers, between the Vișeu de Sus and Paltin stations.

“The Mocănița from Vişeu de Sus is the last forest railway with steam in the world. Currently, there are four steam locomotives operating on this route, their names being: Switzerland, Cozia, Măriuţa, Krauss. The total duration of the trip on the route Vișeu de Sus – Paltin Station is two hours”announces the town hall of Viseu de Sus.

The town of Cavnic at the foot of the Gutâi Mountains was an old mining center of Maramureș, but since the beginning of the 2000s it has become increasingly popular as a tourist resort, thanks to its ski slopes.

The town of Baia Sprie, also a former mining center, presents visitors with a unique place: the blue lake, which the locals say changes its colors depending on the season.

The most important city of Maramureș, the former mining center Baia Mare, offers several tourist attractions, the most popular being the planetarium, the medieval bastion and the House of Iancu de Hunedoara, dating back to the 15th century.

Sighet prison – the memorial to the victims of communism

It is said about Sighetul Marmației that it is the place “where the map hangs in the nail”, but beyond this legend – also illustrated by the “Nail” monument in its center, the city in northern Romania has much deeper meanings. Here is the prison-museum of Sighet, the place that reveals the atrocities suffered by Romanians in communist prisons.

Sighet prison was built in 1897, and from 1948 the prison in the north of the country became a place of detention for opponents of the communist regime. In May 1950, over a hundred Romanian dignitaries were brought here: former ministers, academics, economists, soldiers, historians, journalists, politicians, some of them sentenced to heavy punishments, others not even tried. Other batches of “enemies of the people” followed, among which were dozens of Greek-Catholic and Roman-Catholic bishops and priests.

Among the victims of Sighet prison were great personalities of interwar Romania: Iuliu Maniu, Sebastian Bornemisa, Radu Portocală, Constantin Argetoianu, Constantin IC Brătianu, Dimitrie Burilleanu (former governor of the National Bank) and Aurel Vlad. Between the years 1950 and 1955, no death certificates were drawn up for the more than 50 convicts who died (a quarter of the number of political prisoners from Sighet) and their families were not notified.

They would have been secretly buried in the “pauper’s cemetery” on the outskirts of the city. According to some testimonies, the detainees were deprived even of the privilege of looking out the window, and the prisons where they were thrown, named “black” and “sister” had no windows. In 1977 the prison was decommissioned, and now its building has become a memorial museum.