The Museum of Ethnography and Folk Art Câmpulung-Muscel

The Museum of Ethnography and Folk Art in Câmpulung-Muscel is hosted by one of the oldest civil houses in town, built in 1735, monument of Romanian old architecture. The appearance is typical for a Muscel area house, with two floors, a wooden pavilion which ends in corrugated masonry arches, extended with a room in console, with columns and balusters of wood, simple plaster profiles to windows, gaps under the arches of the pavilion, and covered with wood tiles.


The building was raised in 1735 by the chancellor Ştefănescu, as the last owner was the lawyer Gheorghe Ştefănescu, hence the name of Gică Ştefănescu Villa. In 1928, it was restored by the Câmpulung architect Dumitru Ionescu Berechet, who got his doctorate in architecture with this paper, which won the Official Salon award. In 1948 the building was donated to the Romanian Academy with a view to becoming a museum, and in 1952 the Câmpulung County Museum was reorganized here. In 1977 it became the Department of Ethnography and Folk Art of the Câmpulung County Museum. The building is very old, very well maintained and used also for organizing special events, temporary exhibitions, contacts with other institutions in the country.


The museum houses exhibitions of folk art and ethnographic objects from Muscel area. The building houses valuable collections of pottery, folk costumes, and fabrics. On the ground floor we can find a homestead kitchen looking like a canvas by Nicolae Grigorescu and Ştefan Luchian; the “small house” or drawing room endowed with spinning and weaving artifacts, and next to it the “large house” or guest house. On the upper floor the exhibits include pottery artifacts reminding of the Câmpulung potter’s art of yore, a gorgeous pyrographed furniture, and an enchanting Muscel costume parade.

The Royal Inn in Suceava

A historical monument and the oldest preserved medieval civil building in the city of Suceava, the inn was built at the end of the XVI-th century, as a hosting house for foreign guests and great merchants. It was erected over an older building, within an area for merchant shops, especially pottery shops, during the 15-16th centuries. Along the centuries, it used to be the meeting point where rulers stopped on their way back from hunting in Suceava forests, reason for it was named "Hanul Domnesc" (The Royal Inn). After the occupation of northern Moldova by the Habsburg Empire in 1775, the Royal Inn changes its destination, becoming a hunting house for the imperial family members. The building became a gendarmerie headquarters, then a private property until 1962.


In 1962 it was completely restored, from the cellar to the roof. In the former kitchen of the inn, the oven was reconstructed in the style of traditional Moldovan ovens. On the first floor have been preserved the oak beams of the ceilings of the two corridors. The architectural elements of the period regained with the restoration of walls, the construction of Royal Inn into the cultural tradition of the old medieval inns of Suceava.


The inn houses Bucovina's Ethnographic Museum or the Ethnography and Popular Art Museum. The permanent exhibition at the ground floor reconstruct the atmosphere of an old inn and includes pub room, private salon, recreation room, cuisine, and basement. In the museum are shown over 6 ethnographic micro zones of the county (Suceava, Humor, Câmpulung-Moldovenesc, Vatra Dornei, Rădăuţi and Fălticeni), exceptional pieces of popular high artistic refinement. The museum has heritage and folk art objects (13,000 items); it highlights a series of very old folk costumes, collections of masks, painted eggs or pieces carved in wood, ceramics, textiles, ornaments for holiday, musical instruments, traditional furniture, some exposed even in the reconstruction of interior peasant houses.