The wood fiber permeates and holds together everything mankind in Maramureș has gathered in her/his life, to pass on to the children: house, table, wagon, tools, art, places of prayer. The world has seen many wood-based civilizations, but few of them remained. The Maramureșean, however, kept his as a treasure – he carried it with him, from generation to generation, all the way to the 21st century. Wood is not only a source of heat and a construction material for him: he embraced it with his hands, his eyes and his mind and turned it into art.
Traditional households
Free and refusing to obey, the people of Maramureș have advanced through history by mastering their own purpose. They were peasants or gentry (also called "nemeș") and raised their household alone, as they saw it fit and as they could afford.
The wooden gate is the ultimate exposed symbol of the Maramureșean's pride – and not the house itself. Through the gate you enter the yard: proof that its purpose is not at all to lock the place in is the fact that the fences are short, allowing the passer-by to see the house and the household annexes. Therefore the gate has a different meaning than protection: it is tall to say something about the people who live beyond it – hence the stately and elaborated wood-carved architecture with solar, zoomorphic and religious symbols, above which stands the year of construction and information about the family members' occupations.
Beyond the gate you find the Maramureș household, which has as its vital center the house – "stătutul" (the place where you simply stay) – made mostly of three rooms over which there is a high roof covered in draniță (wood shingles). Around the house gravitate the annexes arranged harmoniously, according to old unwritten ordinances, in the garden enclosed by a woven hazel fence.
What makes the traditional households special is what ethnographers call "openness" – the passer-by can see everything from the street. The people of Maramureș are sociable and jovial – it is possible that they will talk to you if they see you on the street, greet you with a glass of horincă and a piece of homemade cheese and then tell you stories and jokes.
If you know where to look, you can still find enough traditional households in Maramureș. Authentic houses with tall gates, carved with an artistic refinement that made Maramureș so special, can be seen in the less wandered streets of Breb, Hoteni and Sârbi, but also in Budești and Călinești.
The wooden churches
For centuries, the village church was the heart of the Maramureș community — a place of prayer, but also where the important decisions of village life were made. This craft of wood produced the churches with sharp spires that made Maramureș famous, two of them listed as UNESCO heritage.
See all the wooden churches and how to visit themTraditional technical installations
People in Maramureș, thrifty and with an engineering spirit, have learned to use the energy of water courses – Mara and Cosău – by building ingenious technology from the material they have always had at hand: wood.
The grains were threshed with traditional thrashers; cereal grains became flour in traditional mills; sunflower and pumpkin seeds were squeezed into oil with oil mills; wool was felted in fulling mills; and the brandy distilleries turned apples, pears or plums into the ever-present horincă, drunk before meals to this day.
The installations were grouped in small complexes, according to local custom: using ingeniously the rotation movement from the same vertical wheel driven by water, the owners increased work efficiency. Such a complex was also a great place to socialise – while waiting for the flour or horincă to be processed, people caught up on news, exchanged impressions and made various plans.
Inevitably, folk techniques were slowly replaced by mass-produced machinery. And yet, on the valley of Cosău, you can still see traditional engineering at work:
- in Sârbi – fulling mills, whirlpools, thrasher, mill, horincă distilleries
- in Budești – whirlpool, mills, horincă distilleries
- in Văleni – mill, whirlpool
- in Chiuzbaia – whirlpools
Everything has been preserved since the time food, clothing and other things needed for life were made at home, right at the village hearth.
