Merry Cemetery from Sapinta is situated in the center of the commune and has eight hundred monuments of popular art, a true and complex outdoor museum.
The cemetery dates back to the mid-1930's and is the creation of the local folk artist Stan Ioan Patras, sculptor, painter and poet rolled in one. Patras used all his skills to create this masterpiece. For half a century the master created hundreds of wooden crosses. After his death in 1977, his work has been carried out by his apprentice, Dumitru Pop Tincu. Crosses are sculpted in oak wood, painted and versified through countersink. All crosses are painted in blue, slightly different from the Voronet blue, named Sapinta blue.Every cross is countersunk with an epitaph written in short verses of ballad. Each epitaph includes in few lines the name and what was essential during the life of the person under the cross. Some epitaphs have also a certain sense of humor, from this reason the Sapanta cemetery was called ,, The Merry Cemetery “.
One famous epitaph is:
Underneath this heavy cross
Lies my mother-in-law poor
Had she lived three days more
I would be here and she would read
You that are passing by
Try not to wake her up
For if she comes back home
She’ll bite my head off
But I will act in the way
That she will not return
Stay here my dear
Mother-in-law.
The logbook you will find at the wooden standing desk next to the ticket window. The cemetery is open all the day till sunset.