The Village Museum: The Rural Heart of Bucharest

Bucharest Village Museum is included in our Bucharest City Tour.

Bucharest Village Museum is one of those few places that take us back to the past and inspire us to understand and appreciate it for its true value. Extending on 14 hectares, in one of the capital’s most beautiful and largest parks, Herastrau, the Village Museum is one of the first open-air ethnographic museums in the world.

House from Apuseni Mountains

This must-see museum recreates the past three centuries of the Romanian village, obtaining an almost surreal experience in urban Bucharest. The Village Museum currently displays 346 houses and more than 53,000 objects, unique peasant homes, and technical installations moved from their original location and rebuilt according to the original techniques, including watermills, oil presses, fountains, roadside crucifixes, and churches.

The houses are organized according to their historical region, offering a rare opportunity to compare in just a few hours the diversity of architectural styles from Romania’s provinces, a clear sign of their history and social realities.

The short yet eventful history of the museum

The existence of the Village Museum of Bucharest is the result of remarkable efforts led throughout the decades to protect the cultural heritage of Romania’s traditional villages. The museum was created in 1936, after 10 years of field research coordinated by Professor Dimitrie Gusti, one of the most notable personalities in Romanian sociology.

House detail

In this first stage, 29 houses from all over the country, water mills, windmills, and other traditional elements of rural architecture were dissembled and brought to Bucharest where they were carefully reassembled. Despite its promising beginnings, the museum faced difficult times during the Second World Ward when it was used to host refugees and even harsher in the communist decades when destroying the traditional village was a main ideological, political, and economic objective of the regime.

The Village Museum managed to survive and grow, adding new elements of folk architecture to its collection, safeguarding the story of centuries of rural creation.

House detail

The Village Museum is one of the main attractions of Bucharest where you can spend hours discovering the authenticity of rural Romania, the creative, inventive, and artistic nature of the Romanian peasant. A long visit to the Village Museum is definitely one of the best things to do in Bucharest, whether you’re a local or a tourist.

Travel tips

The museum hosts many traditional fairs, usually on religious holidays, with a rich display of traditional food and crafts.

You can buy authentic and hand-made rural creations or serve lunch in the historic inn located inside the museum.

More details on www.muzeul-satului.ro