Merry Cemetery

Merry Cemetery and its church
Merry Cemetery (video)
The workshop at Stan Ioan Pătraș's house where the tombstones of Merry Cemetery were created

The Merry Cemetery (Romanian: Cimitirul Vesel pronounced [tʃimiˈtirul ˈvesel]) is a cemetery in the village of Săpânța, Maramureș County, Romania. It is famous for its brightly coloured 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. It has been listed as one of the Seven Wonders of Romania by Imperator Travel.[1]

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,[2] as well as in a photography book titled The Merry Cemetery of Sapanta by Peter Kayafas.[3]

  1. ^ "Cele 7 minuni ale României – la final!" (in Romanian). July 20, 2012.
  2. ^ Mihalcea, Roxana (2017). Crucile de la Săpânța: o colecție de epitafuri din veselul cimitir maramureșan. București: ALL. ISBN 978-606-587-515-9. OCLC 1031115821.
  3. ^ "The Merry Cemetery of Sapanta". Purple Martin Press. Retrieved 17 June 2020.