Hanul Domnesc Ethnographic Museum, Suceava

The Hanul Domnesc Ethnographic Museum stands at Strada Ciprian Porumbescu nr. 5, in central Suceava, and belongs to the Bukovina National Museum. The building is first documented in 1627 as the residence of Prince Miron Barnovschi, who gave it to the Metropolitanate of Suceava to serve as an inn, with the income used to keep lamps burning before the holy relics. A property register of 1786 describes it as lodging for members of the imperial family who came to hunt, and towards the end of the eighteenth century it was bought by Baron Kapri. The 1856 town plan marks it as "Hanul Domnesc" (the Princely Inn). After 1918 it was privately owned, and in 1962 it was taken over by the state. The restoration of 1962-1966, from cellar to roof, aimed to recreate the look of medieval Moldavian architecture. On 28 June 1968 the building opened as the Ethnography and Folk Art Section of the Suceava County Museum. It is a solid building with thick stone walls and a shingle roof, with a ground floor, an upper floor and two vaulted cellars, and it is a listed historic monument (LMI code SV-II-m-B-05476). The exhibition was reorganised in 1982 around the county's six ethnographic zones (Fălticeni, Humor, Dorna, Rădăuți, Câmpulung Moldovenesc and Suceava), and part of that layout survives upstairs, with textiles, sheepskin coats, wooden objects, black pottery from Marginea, glazed pottery from Rădăuți and dowry necklaces. The ground floor, reorganised in 2003, recreates an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century inn used by dignitaries and merchants, with a dining hall, guest salon, bedroom, pantry and kitchen, furnished with stoves, household textiles, ceramics and objects related to transport and hunting. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday.