Merry Cemetery

The Merry Cemetery (Romanian: Cimitirul Vesel) is a cemetery in the village of Săpânţa, Maramureş county, Romania that is famous for its colourful tombstones with the naive painting that represent scenes from the life of the burried persons and even poetry in which the are described those persons.

The unusual feature of this cemetery is that it grows apart from most of the European cultures, that consider death something solemn. Sometimes this is put in connection with the Dacian culture, whose philosophy was based on the immortality of the soul and the belief that somebody's death was a joyful moment, as that person was getting to a better life.

The cemetery has its origin in some crosses sculpted by Ioan Patraş. In 1935, Patraş sculpted the first epitaph and since the 1960s, the whole cemetery was populated with over 800 such crosses, sculpted from oak wood, and it became an open-air museum and an touristic attraction.

External links

• Sapanta – photo gallery
• New York Times Article: In Merry Cemetery, Romanians' lives in carvings and verse