The National Museum of the Romanian Peasant is waiting for you, starting from Friday, 27, until Sunday, October 29, 2023, between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., at the Saint Dumitru Fair – of peasant antiquities, which will be attended by collectors from all over the country with old things, collection. Placed next to each other, the objects presented at the fair form a beautiful and impressive story of rural life from times that begin with „once upon a time.”
By visiting this fair, you will have a vivid image of what the peasant household meant, inviting you to save the objects from oblivion and decay together and reintroduce them into a circuit of contemporary urban civilization.
During the fair at the Peasant Museum, you will be able to admire and buy:
- pieces of peasant costume: ii, catrinze, bete, vâlnice;
- interior fabrics (carpets, wipes, pillowcases and tablecloths);
- icons on wood and glass, crosses, trinkets, ornaments;
- carved, painted furniture (dowry chests, tables, chairs, dressing tables, spoons, cupboards);
- ceramics, small bowls, wooden dishes, pots, bowls;
- spinning forks and wheels, spindles, whorls;
- lanterns, clocks, chandeliers, brass nuts and grinders, but also
- socio-ethnographic publications from the interwar period, old banknotes, stamps with ethnographic subjects…
The organizers will also spoil the public with cakes, gingerbread, muffins, honey, and brandy. There will also be medicinal plants or flower pots.
The price of the entrance ticket to the fair: adults – RON 12; pensioners – RON 6; pupils and students, holders of the Euro 26 card, up to 30 years old, adults with medium or mild disabilities – RON 3.
Saint Dumitru or Sânmedru is lord over the coming winter. Saint George rules half the year, and he rules the other half. It is the day of mourning for all kinds of agreements between servants and masters, tenants and landlords, and those who give and receive loan money. This is an occasion for partying and arguing. Nobody works during St. Dumitru – not at all. The folds are opened, and the sheep go downhill. The shepherds hold out a husk to find out what the weather will be like. If a black sheep sits on it, the winter will be mild; if it is white, it will be snowy.
Irina Nicolau, Guide to Romanian Holidays, Bucharest,
Humanitas Publishing House, 1998.
The legend says that God called Sângeorz and Sâmedru to Him to entrust them with the keys of time: „From now on I entrust you with the keys of time and at my command you have to close sooner or later the seasons of the year. The Saints got the keys, and one went to the right and one to the left. When he hears the croaking of the frogs, Săngeorz reaches out and takes the keys from Sâmedru’s hand, and he always closes the winter with one key, and with the other, he opens the spring, the good times, because, through the frog’s voice, he received a message and a command from God. When the migratory birds are taken away from us, when the croaking of the frog is no longer heard, Sâmedru stretches out his hand and receives the keys from Sângeorzul, then hastily closes the good weather with one key and opens the winter with the other. They wear the keys at their waists, lest someone steal them from the doors of the weather and play with the weather as they like.”
Simion Florea Marian, Romanian Holidays. Ethnographic study, Bucharest,
Romanian Cultural Foundation Publishing House, 1994.
Visit Bucharest is one of the media partners of this project.
