On the initiative of the mayor of Iasi Mihai Chirica, a project representative of the Moldovan villages from both sides of the Prut will be implemented in the local Botanical Garden. In this regard, mayor Mihai Chirica signed a partnership agreement with “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University, “Moldova” National Museum Complex and Iasi County Council, IPN reports.
The project will be implemented by “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University that will identify an appropriate European financing line and will benefit from the support of the other partner institutions.
“I think the realization of such a museum became not only a necessity, but primarily an obligation. After 1945, especially after 1990, the traditional Romanian village has fallen into ruin. The rural lifestyle, with the villager being very close to the cycles of nature, clean and modest, turned into a hybrid life, similar neither to rural life nor to urban life. The people seem to be less attentive to the rules of the community. The Communists built ugly bocks in villages and by the territorial systematization plan of the 1970s aimed to destroy hundreds of villages with bulldozers. But only the transition after 1990 gave the final blow to the traditional village,” Mihai Chirica stated on the occasion of the signing of the agreement with Tudorel Toader, rector of “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University.
The massive depopulation of villages that are far from urban centers, transformation of communes from the vicinity of large towns into suburbs and the multiple chaotic and unaesthetic constructions erected in rural areas by Romanians who worked abroad radically changed the aspect of the Romanian village. “Moldova cannot boast of monument villages as in Ardeal, but the precision and discipline of Ardeal in our country were replaced with rural life full of magic and a wonderful and simultaneously strange village. Alecsandri, Creangă, Eminescu, Garabet Ibrăileanu etc. described an absolutely superb rural life,” said Mihai Chirica.
He expressed his confidence that the project will be successful, reminding of the Village Museum in Bucharest, which annually attracts thousands of tourists who want to discover a secret world.
Chisinau hosts an open-air Village Museum in Botanica district. It was inaugurated on May 18, 1995 and is to replicate the Bessarabian village of the 18th-19th centuries. The museum complex for now includes only a wooden church built in 1642. This was brought from Hirișeni village of Telenești district for being reconstructed. The museum complex is to include six ethnographic areas with 165 monuments, such as windmills, wooden churches, an inn and peasant annexes, on an area of 150 ha.
