Merry Cemetery - Săpânţa (România)

The Merry Cemetery (Romanian: Cimitirul Vesel) is a cemetery in the village of Săpânţa, Maramureş county, Romania. It is famous for its colourful tombstones with naïve paintings describing, in an original and poetic manner, the persons that are buried there as well as scenes from their lives. The Merry Cemetery became an open-air museum and a national tourist attraction.

The unusual feature of this cemetery is that it diverges from the prevalent belief, culturally shared within European societies -- a belief that views death as something indelibly solemn. Connections with the local Dacian culture have been made, a culture whose philosophical tenets presumably vouched for the immortality of the soul and the belief that death was a moment filled with joy and anticipation for a better life.

The cemetery's origins are linked with the name of Stan Ioan Pătraş, a local artist who sculpted the first tombstone crosses. In 1935, Pătraş carved the first epitaph and, as of 1960s, more than 800 of such oak wood crosses came into sight. The inscription on his tombstone cross says:
Since I was a little boy
I was known as Stan Ioan Pătraş
Listen to me, fellows
There are no lies in what I am going to say

All along my life
I meant no harm to anyone
But did good as much as I could
To anyone who asked

Oh, my poor World
Because It was hard living in it.

Funny epitaph:
...Now I will tell you a good one
I kind of liked the plum tzuica
With my friends at the pub
I used to forget what I came for.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merry_Cemetery

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• merry Cemetery
• Merry Cemetery Sapanta
• Cimitirul Vesel Sapanta
• Romania
• Maramures
• funny epitaph
• naive painting

[camorph]

Was educated and entertained. Thank you.

[mysnakeeye]

@camorph it is very interesting how some ppl can look death :))

[DejaVuSu]

Well, that is the most colorful cemetery I have ever seen :)

Nice to know about it.....thank you!

And you picked some happy, merry music to go with it!

[mysnakeeye]

@DejaVuSu hahaha :)) this song is specific from Maramures Area, where this cemetery was built

[FlyingFishbone]

How wonderful!!! :-)))

Sofia

[mysnakeeye]

@FlyingFishbone nice to hear u already visited this cemetery :))

[mysnakeeye]

@jfnuyen :)) look strange but still merry :))

[jfnuyen]

Those are very elaborate headstones Lori. They look very strange to me, yet they are beautiful. 5*

[mysnakeeye]

A cross in this cemetery cost 450-500 U.S. dollars :)) there are people who know how to square accounts with their life in merry way :))

[mysnakeeye]

@mysnakeeye " The Crisis so bad tried me / I spent a lot of money on medicines / I thought that I live long / But it got me into clay", "Let burn this hard crisis/ It came to my door / When I found it at my door / In a heavy disease it put me down.