The Bucharest Village Museum
The Village Museum is, maybe, one of the main attractions of nowadays Bucharest, even if the thought of an almost entire village being situated in the middle of the capital of Romania is kind of ironical. In a crowded city as Bucharest, with plenty of luxury hotels and restaurants, the Village museum hosts a large collection of old Romanian houses dated back from the 18th century. Here, you can find houses not only from various periods of time, but also from various regions of Romania, the most famous houses and wooden churches being the ones from Maramures, well known for their exceptional wood sculptures. The Village Museum is not only a museum but a village itself, having everything a real village needs like market places, roads, trees, plants, except people that actually live in the houses.
To make a total of it, in the Village Museum you can find almost 350 houses and monuments, which make the object of a permanent exhibition. In addition to the old houses and monuments, here you can view old tools that made life possible for the Romanian peasantry back in the days. Sometimes, you can also witness exhibitions with sale of crafts and old arts. Therefore, if you find yourself in the Village Museum in such a period of time, you can go back home with a souvenir that will always remind of you of this unique place in the world.
The Village Museum started to exist in 1936 and nowadays it bears the name of one of it’s most important founders, Dimitrie Gusti and has been located ever since in District #1 of Bucharest, in the Carol the 2nd Park, near the Baneasa lake. To enter the museum, you must pay a small tax.
Why go to the Village Museum while staying in Bucharest? Because it’s considered unique in the whole Europe and it takes you in a world in which you never been. A walk alongside the old houses that once were actually lived works exactly like a time machine, allowing you to imagine how the villages looked like back in the days when we had no smartphones. The simple life presented to you like an alternative, like a way of life, like Heaven, if you please. Even if you reside in a luxury hotel in Bucharest, a few hour change is never a bad thing, but a breath of fresh air given to you in a moment of need, when you feel tired of all the city racket and fast technology.