DAY 1: Excursion

AER SUMMER ACADEMYMARAMUES, ROMANIA

TUSEDAY 7TH OF AUGUSTDAY 1

Due to flight delays and cancelled flights we arrived on Tuesday at 4pm instead of 4pm on Monday.

Hence we also missed the first parts of the day.

STEFANS TOWER

Stefans Tower, first stop of the study visit. The oldest cathedral in Baia Mare.  By walking 165 steps, peaking at 51 meters, you’ll have an amazing 360 degree view of Baia Mare.

Looking east you’ll find an empty yard of stone representing the area of where to church used to stand before burning down after a third fire. The Tower, built in 1332-1335 (middle age), was then the biggest cathedral in Transylvania. On the ground there’s also trees that grew from the burnt ground in 1846 which are protected and meant so much so that even the dead one was and interest of preserving. Behind it you can see several small bells. These bells hang there in honour of the dead (the site is also an old cement army) and they ring 3 time a day buy the organ in the yellow church. The church was built in 1721 and is the oldest active church.

The staircase is, just as any other medieval staircase, designed to be narrow to prevent the attackers to bring a shield into the staircase and for the protectors to stand strong with support from the left hand on the pillar and a sword in the right.

Definitely a site worth preserving and an important heritage.

THE BUCHERS TOWER

The Buchers Tower is the only Tower left from medieval Baia Mare.

The Tower is located by South Gate on the picture (map). The Tower heal the Guild of Butchers who took care of the Tower and protected it by force is necessary. Baia Mare was a city, but not a fortress. In the centre of the map you can also see Stefans Tower and the former church connected to it.

Today the Buchers Tower offer traditional craft for e.g youth and kids. Offers craft to school classes and during breaks.

Embroidery is one of the traditional crafts in Romania. A regional project that recently was ongoing was to collect patterns from “the mothers”as they call it. Mothers usually made their own patterns and kept the originals for themselves. Now they have collected the mothers and the patterns and helped the, digitalised it. So now any person can fins these patterns, share and use them. A very nice and concrete example of “preserving the old while facing the new”.

THE LOCAL ART MUSEUM

Started by an Armenian artist that were coming to Baia Mare to paint. He loved it so much that he started a summer camp for artists in 1896 and it has a tradition ever since. Artists comes here from all over the world and the artists donated paintings (their work) as a payment for the camp.

At the moment the museum has over 400 paintings, all of them donated from camp participants, dated from 1896 to 2012.

The building itself was constructed in 1748, containing the head quarter of The Salt Line Office. Bara Mare has a rich history of salt mining.

The day in a whole was amazing and we learnt a lot just too bad we arrived late and missed the seminar where we were supposed to share best practices in how our regions work with youth initiatives connected to cultural heritage.

// Rebecca and Emil