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Săpânța, Romania
Romania

Things to do in Săpânța

Why you should go

Ninety seconds on Săpânța

A village near the Ukrainian border with a cemetery that refuses to be solemn. Since 1935 its graves have carried carved oak crosses painted blue, each with a picture of the dead person at work and a first person verse about how they lived and sometimes how they died. Stan Ioan Pătraș began it and his apprentice carried it on, so the cemetery is still growing. The monastery a kilometre away has the tallest wooden church in the country.

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Things to do

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  1. Merry Cemetery

    Merry Cemetery

    Landmark · 1.5 hr

    About eight hundred painted oak crosses in a working village cemetery, each with a naive painting and a rhymed epitaph in the voice of the dead, begun by Stan Ioan Pătraș in 1935. The verses are candid about drink, infidelity and the lorry that did it.

  2. Săpânța-Peri Monastery

    Monastery · 1 hr

    A monastery church finished in 2003 whose wooden spire reaches 78 metres, the tallest wooden church in the country and among the tallest in Europe. It was built to remember a medieval monastery now on the Ukrainian bank, and the spire is visible from the valley road.

Basemap Meridian · data © OpenStreetMap

Dispatches

1
The Merry Cemetery of Săpânța: What the Crosses Actually Say
Săpânța

The Merry Cemetery of Săpânța: What the Crosses Actually Say

The painted grave crosses of Săpânța are a working trade and not a museum piece, six years of seasoning in the oak and every cross still made to order.
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