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World's First Merry Cemetery, The Merry Cemetery in Săpânța, Romania

October 31, 2024

World's First Merry Cemetery, The Merry Cemetery in Săpânța, Transylvania, Romania

Săpânța, Maramureș County, Romania--The Merry Cemetery, a cemetery in the village of Săpânța, Maramureș County, Romania, is famous for its brightly colored tombstones with naïve paintings describing, in an original and poetic manner, the people who are buried there in addition to scenes from their lives; Stan Ioan Pătraș, a local artist carved the first epitaph back in 1935; the cemetery sets the world record for being the World's First Merry Cemetery, according to the WORLD RECORD ACADEMY.

"The Merry Cemetery is a cemetery in the village of Săpânța, Maramureș County, Romania. It is famous for its brightly colored tombstones with naïve paintings describing, in an original and poetic manner, the people who are buried there in addition to scenes from their lives. The Merry Cemetery became an open-air museum and a national tourist attraction," says Wikipedia.

"The unusual feature of this cemetery is that it diverges from the prevalent belief, culturally shared within European societies, that views death as something indelibly solemn. A collection of the epitaphs from the Merry Cemetery exists in a 2017 volume called Crucile de la Săpânța, compiled by author Roxana Mihalcea, as well as in a photography book titled The Merry Cemetery of Sapanta by Peter Kayafas.

"The cemetery's origins are linked with the name of Stan Ioan Pătraș, a local artist who sculpted the first tombstone crosses. In 1935, Pătraș carved the first epitaph and, as of the 1960s, more than 800 of such oak wood crosses came into sight. The cemetery is noted for featuring a large number of humorous epitaphs that generally poke fun at the interred person in a light-hearted way or reference a general trope about family relations."

"Who says that death can't have its lighter side? Certainly not Dumitru Pop. For about 30 years now, he's been taking away some of the sting and adding a little zing to the dreaded inevitable," the Romania Tourism says.

"Behind the Church of the Assumption in this small town of 5,000 (living) souls in northern Romania there's a unique cemetery, known as the Cimitirul Vesel - the Merry Cemetery. It's called that with good reason Each grave is marked, not with an austere, cold stone, but with a lively, beautifully carved wooden cross, painted in the radiant blue of heaven and decorated with a painting and an original poem that disclose a little something about the life and character of the plot's eternal inhabitant.

"Some of the verses are wickedly funny, others are more whimsical. Some are heartbreaking, telling of lives tragically cut short by accidents or illnesses."

"The cemetery’s uniqueness is recognized not only in Romania, but also in Europe. It got the first place in a funerary monuments top. It’s undeniable how special the paintings are and how the colours will truly transfer you into an artistic paradise," the cimitirulveselsapanta.ro says.

"Sapanta Blue, the main colour used on the tombstones combines with countless other mixtures of colours. There are poems written on the wooden oak crosses and drawings with scenes of the deceased life on the upper side of every cross."

"When someone dies, their memory generally enters a kind of idealized state in the minds of those who loved them. Their flaws are forgiven and forgotten, and the way in which they passed (especially if it was unpleasant) often goes unspoken. On their tombstone generalized niceties are written, often reduced to as little as “Rest in Peace,” the Atlas Obscura says.

"Not so in the town of Săpânţa, Romania, where at the Cimitirul Vesel or “Merry Cemetery,” over 800 wooden crosses bear the life stories, dirty details, and final moments of the bodies they mark. Displayed in bright, cheery pictures and annotated with limericks are the stories of almost everyone who has died of the town of Săpânţa.

"Illustrated crosses depict soldiers being beheaded and a townsperson being hit by a truck. The epigraphs reveal a surprising level of truth. “Underneath this heavy cross. Lies my mother in law poor… Try not to wake her up. For if she comes back home. She’ll bite my head off.”

"<You don’t talk ill about the dead>. The authors of the colorful graves in Romanian Săpânța disregard this rule. With dark humour and incredible directness, they disclose people’s flaws and describe how they died. Welcome to the Merry Cemetery – a graveyard with no taboos, where death is a topic to laugh at," the Wobbly Ride says.

"The pictures of the cemetery in Săpânța seem naive and unambiguous, yet there is a dose of symbolism in them. The omnipresent blue also called Săpânţa blue, represented hope and freedom.

"While the inscriptions on most cemeteries express the grief and sadness of those left behind, in Săpânța the deceased has the voice. The poems are in the first person and the present tense."

"Săpânţa village boasts the unique 'Merry Cemetery', famous for the colourfully painted wooden crosses that adorn the tombstones in the village's graveyard. Shown in art exhibitions across Europe, the crosses attract coachloads of visitors who marvel at the gentle humour of the epitaphs and the human warmth that created them," the Lonely Planet says.

"The man behind the Merry Cemetery was Ioan Stan Pătraş, a simple woodcarver who, in 1935, started carving crosses to mark graves in the old church cemetery. He painted each cross in blue – the traditional colour of hope and freedom – and on top of each he inscribed a witty epitaph to the deceased. Every cross tells a different story, and the painted pictures and inscriptions illustrate a wealth of traditional occupations: shepherds tending their sheep, mothers cooking for their families, barbers cutting hair and weavers working at their looms. There are upwards of 800 people buried here.

"Pătraş carved and painted his own cross, complete with a portrait of himself; it is directly opposite the main entrance to the church, which has now been enlarged and renovated. Since Pătraş’ death in 1977 his apprentice Dumitru 'Tincu' Pop, as well as a number of other craftsmen, work in Pătraş’ former house and studio, now a fascinating little museum, the Ioan Stan Pătraş Memorial House. It's about 400m down the road to the right of the cemetery's main entrance."

"In 1935, a local popular artist has started to carve and paint in vivid colors the wooden crosses of his defunct neighbors from Sapânta," the Transylvanian Tours says.

"Then, the artist added an ironic epitaph resuming the life of the deceased or the conditions of his death. It has resulted in a joyful collection of naive drawings and funny, short stories – the Merry Cemetery of Sapânta.

"Nowadays, the local artist, Stan Ioan Patras, has his painting and epitaph carved on his cross."

"Serenely advance to the underworld - so could it be described the Merry Cemetery from Săpânța, unique in the world," the Touring Romania says.

"Oak wood crosses, painted in vivid colors, ironic epitaphs about the lives of the people resting there, written to the 1st person, meaningful drawings showing their occupations, all these contributing to the name of a „Merry" cemetery from Săpânța.

"This tradition was inaugurated by a local man, the wooden sculptor Stan Ioan Patras, who carried out the first crosses starting with 1935. The sculptor died in 1977. He produced over 800 crosses and he wrote also his epitaph."

"In this area enclosed by the Carpathian Mountains emerged a woodcraft-oriented society with an interest in creating not only useful, but also particularly aesthetic objects. Perhaps the same interest was shared by one particular artisan from Maramures county, Ioan Stan Patras, who left behind a real treasure," the travelguideromania.com says.

"Tombstone sculptor and artist, he decided to move away from the traditional way of carving wooden crosses. Being a simple, religious person who feared God, he understood that death is part of life. This determined him to stop looking at death with the rigidity we are used to.

"The paintings on the wooden crosses depicted an important scene from the life of the departed. Sometimes, these scenes illustrated the person’s occupation: forester, hunter, carpenter, cook or farmer. Women were pictured baking bread, weaving carpets or spinning wool. If the person had died in an unusual way (by accident), the painting on the cross illustrated the type of accident."

"Death isn't always tragic, at least not in this Romanian cemetery, where the dead beguile visitors with tales of their lives. The Merry Cemetery in the north-western village of Sapanta is a collection of more than 1,000 elaborate wooden Orthodox crosses etched with colourful epitaphs and childlike drawings," the Daily Mail reports.

"There are few secrets in this small community and whatever flaws someone had when they were alive are turned into 'grave art' when they die. This darkly humorous and matter-of-fact approach, rooted in the traditional peasant culture of the region, intrigues visitors.

"Despite its remote location some 600 kilometres (360 miles) northwest of the Romanian capital, Bucharest, it's one of the country's top tourist attractions."