Ion Creangă Memorial House, Humulești

The „Ion Creangă” Memorial Museum stands at no. 8 Strada Ion Creangă in Humulești, a former village on the Ozana river that is now part of the town of Târgu Neamț. The house was built around 1830 (the List of Historic Monuments dates it to 1833) by Petrea Ciubotariul, the writer's grandfather, who gave it to his son Ștefan a Petrei; in 1835 Ștefan married Smaranda, daughter of David Creangă of Pipirig. Ion Creangă was born here, on 1 March 1837 by his own account (a Humulești register gives 10 June 1839), and lived here permanently until 1846, then intermittently until 1855, when he left for the Socola Seminary in Iași. The house stayed in the family, passing to the writer's youngest sister, Ileana, and then to his niece, Sofia Grigoriu. In 1937, for the centenary of Creangă's birth, a small museum was set up in the village school and officially opened on 7 May 1939. In 1944 Sofia Grigoriu donated the house to the General Association of Romanian Teachers, and it has operated as a memorial museum since 1951. Restoration work followed in 1960, 1975 and 1988. The building is a modest peasant dwelling of timber logs covered with clay, with a shingle roof and a narrow porch. It has three rooms: the entrance hall, the living room and the storeroom from which one climbed into the loft. The living room is furnished like peasant interiors of the period, with a stove and sleeping ledge, a pole for holiday clothes, a dowry chest, a bench, icons, embroidered towels and weaving and spinning tools. On display are objects that belonged to the Creangă family, documents, signed postcards, school textbooks by Creangă and Eugen Taru's illustrations for „Amintiri din copilărie” (Memories of My Boyhood). The house is a historic monument (LMI code NT-IV-m-A-10763) and belongs to the Neamț National Museum Complex. Neamț County Council completed a conservation project for the house, funded by the 2014-2020 Regional Operational Programme, and the museum reopened on 2 June 2024 with a new display in the house and courtyard and a newly built exhibition space with photo-documentary panels and a touchscreen. Each year the museum hosts the „Zilele Ion Creangă” (Ion Creangă Days) events.