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Săpânţa's landmark is the "Merry Cemetery", created by a jester local (Stan Ioan Patras) since 1935.
Săpânţa would have been a peaceful & traditional village in the Maramures region, a place where the traditions are well preserved, unless for one local who decided to do something different... Death is not taken seriously in this village, where in the "Merry Cemetery" over 600 wooden crosses show the life stories and dirty details of the locals. Oak wood-carved crosses are painted in bright colours, with cheery pictures and marked with funny limericks depicting the stories of the Săpânţa deceased.
Stan Ioan Pătraş was born in Săpânţa in 1908, and since he was a teenager he had already begun carving wooden crosses for the village cemetery. By 1935 Pătraş had begun carving clever or ironic poems (in a rough local dialect) on the tombstones, as well as painting them with the deceased's image, often in a funny way.
The "Merry Cemetery" colourful epitaphs will reveal a high & surprising level of truth, in opposition with the traditional cemeteries. Go see for yourself :)
