Merry Cemetery, Săpânța

The Merry Cemetery lies in the village of Săpânța, the seat of the commune of the same name in northern Maramureș County, next to the Orthodox church and the village's old cemetery. It is known for its brightly coloured wooden crosses, with naive paintings showing scenes from the lives and occupations of the people buried there, accompanied by verse epitaphs written in the first person and often with a humorous touch. In 1935, at the suggestion of the Greek Catholic priest Grigore Rițiu (1892-1969), a teacher of Romanian and Latin, the craftsman Stan Ioan Pătraș (1908-1977) began making the upright part of the crosses wider to leave room for an epitaph. From 1936 he added figures carved in relief and painted with colours made from natural pigments. The dominant colour is the blue now called "Săpânța blue", while the other colours carry a traditional symbolism: green for life, yellow for fertility, red for passion and black for death. By 1977 Pătraș had made about 700 crosses. From 1977 the craft was continued by his apprentice, Dumitru Pop-Tincu (1955-2022). The crosses are carved from oak, and their number has reached about 800. Some are painted on both sides: one side describes the life of the deceased, the other the cause of death. Most of the texts keep spelling mistakes and archaic forms of writing. Stan Ioan Pătraș's own cross carries his epitaph, which opens with the lines "De cu tânăr copilaș / Io am fost Stan Ion Pătraș" ("Since I was a little child / I have been Stan Ion Pătraș"). The Merry Cemetery is a class A historic monument (LMI code MM-IV-s-A-04832), dated 1935, with Stan Ioan Pătraș recorded as its creator. The craftsman's memorial house, with the workshop where the first crosses were made, is also in Săpânța and belongs to the Maramureș Museum in Sighetu Marmației.