MARAMURES

Rich in oak and fir forests, Maramures is often called the land of wood. Its people, the Moroseni, are widely respected for their carpentry skills, developed over the past 900 years. Their masterpieces are the tall-spire, shingle-roofed, double-skirted timber churches that have become a significant feature of the landscape.

Lying on the northwestern edge of Romania, Maramures is an isolated enclave in the Carpathian Mountains. Ever since the 14th century, Maramures has been considered part of Transylvania, but its remote location and independent traditions have always given the region its own distinctive character. After the partitioning of land after World War I, only one-third of the "original" Maramures region (that south of the Tisa River) reverted to Romania.

The landscape of Maramures reflects the fact that it has been well cared for by hand rather than machinery for centuries. Nowhere is this more true than in the four valleys that constitute "Historic Maramures", each one preserving its rural heritage of folk customs, architecture, music, and dress in a slightly more concentrated form than elsewhere in Maramures.

There are nearly a hundred wooden churches in Maramures; eight of them are on UNESCO's World Heritage List. But the region's wood culture extends far beyond the churches: The timber houses are also magnificent, with steep roofs and arcaded verandes. The tall, farmyard gates, covered in decorative carvings and equipped with their own roofs, often signal that the family within are local Romanian peasant nobles, and that these apparently easygoing communities have a sense of self-respect that goes beyond mere material possessions.

Despite the pressures of modernity, Maramures lies right at the heart of ancient Europe and the loveliness of this area is much more than the sum of its picture-postcard views.