You can rarely find a place in Europe where people are so respectful of the traditions of their ancestors as people in the North – West of Romania are.
On your journey in Maramures you can admire the beautiful, traditional costumes, the famous shirts with insets and shoulders, old installations and the whirlpool where, from old times, people used to wash thick materials.The center of this extraordinary universe is the wood civilization developed from a prohibition: in the thirteen century, the Hungarian Catholic aristocrats have forbidden the usage of rock in church constructions. This is how the Gothic style from Maramures was born. The Gothic style is reflected in the painted churches and in the monumental gates decorated with specific motifs: sun, tree of life, the girdle. Eight of the notorious churches, made of oak wood or fir wood, are included in the UNESCO World Heritage list: Barsana, Budesti, Desesti, Ieud, Plopis, Poienile Izei, Rogoz and surdesti.
Maramures is the place where you can see an unique place in the world: The Happy Cementery from Sapanta, a place of eternal rest with colorful wooden crosses, painted with the portraits of the deceased ones and with amusing epitaphs reminding of the Dacians who used to defy death by believing in the after – life.