Merry Cemetery attracts visitors with colorful paintings about the lives of those buried here - Photo: 3 SEA EUROPE
According to Romania Insider , the tradition of engraving and painting on tombstones in Sapanta began in 1935, based on the initiative of a local artist, Stan Ioan Patras.
Stan Ioan Patras was born in 1908, in Sapanta. At the age of 14, he began creating the first crosses for the local cemetery, inspired by his love for people and life.
Patras painted the cross in a special blue color, now known as Sapanta blue. He believed that this was the color of the sky in his native Romania - the color of hope and freedom.
By 1935, he began carving poems written in dialect, telling the stories of those buried here.
The cemetery has hundreds of crosses - Photo: GOODNET
On the crosses, he painted images of the deceased when they were alive, and also how they passed away.
Mr. Patras personally carved, wrote poems and painted more than 800 folk art masterpieces in his 40 years of life.
From 1960 onwards, the entire cemetery was gradually filled with hundreds of carved oak crosses, making it the unique site it is today.
In the early 1970s, a French journalist discovered the existence of the Merry Cemetery and announced it to the outside world .
A corner of the Stan Ioan Patras Memorial House - Photo: PELAGO
In 1977, Stan Ioan Patras passed away. He left the responsibility of continuing the tradition of carving epitaphs to his most talented apprentice, Dumitru Pop.
Since then, Mr. Pop has spent three decades continuing his work carving crosses at the cemetery and turning Mr. Patras's house into a museum of the cheerful cemetery.
Not far from the cemetery, the Stan Ioan Patras Memorial House is where visitors can learn more about the life and work of the man behind the unique cemetery.
According to Atlas Obscura magazine, the cemetery is so famous that a Romanian book titled “The Crosses of Sapanta” was published. The book lists all the inscriptions in the cemetery, along with descriptions and explanations of the meanings of the engraved messages.
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