Can death be cheerful? Absolutely! That’s the impression you get when you visit the Merry Cemetery in Sapanta, Maramures, Romania. Believe me, this cemetery is unique on a global scale and beautifully demystifies death. Because here, death is not a menacing grim reaper with a sharp scythe. It is more like an uncle who tells dirty jokes when he is drunk.

Do you remember that scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian, where Brian hangs on the cross and cheerfully whistles: Always look on the bright side of life? In the Merry Cemetery in northern Romania, he would walk around whistling all the time. Because here, death is depicted in a humorous way on the tombstones. Although perhaps not death itself, but rather the life of the person whose mortal remains lie beneath the layer of soil.

Believe me, when you look at the images carved on the wooden plaques, you will smile too. Yes, it is worth looking at the bright side of life. Even with a grain of salt.
If a cemetery is among the biggest attractions in Romania, believe me, it cannot be an ordinary cemetery. And it is precisely such an extraordinary place that has been attracting more and more tourists from all over the world for decades. It attracts to such an extent that admission to the cemetery is ticketed! Can you imagine a ticket to a cemetery? That alone is quite funny. Queuing up for the cemetery is not a metaphor here!

The fact that this is not just any place is evidenced by the fact that the Merry Cemetery in Sapanta was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1999.

How the Merry Cemetery came to be

Everything created by mankind begins in the mind, and the Merry Cemetery in Romania is no exception. At the beginning of the 20th century, Mr. Stan Ion Patras started something that will keep him in the memory of Romania and tourists for centuries to come. In 1934 (although sometimes the date 1935 is also given), he painted (as icons are painted) the first cross, which was erected in this style in the cemetery in the middle of the village. The cross was created for a boy who drowned in the Tisza River. At least, this is how Dumitru Tincu Pop, Ion Patras’ successor, who continues to create crosses to this day, described the origin of this unusual tradition.

As his successor, he continues the tradition and sticks to the style invented by Ion Patras. It is dominated by a characteristic blue color, which even has its own name, Sapanta Blue.

But the colors also have other meanings here, as blue symbolizes hope, black symbolizes death, red symbolizes passion, green symbolizes life, and yellow symbolizes the sun and youth.

Ion Patras created about 600 tombstones, which is the vast majority of those that can be seen today. Apparently, there are about 800 graves in total in the Merry Cemetery.

Graves at the Merry Cemetery. Smile 🙂

Gravestones are a unique combination of epitaphs and images. Each cross consists of a written description of the life and death of the person buried beneath it. You don’t even need to know Romanian to guess how a person died or what contributed to their death. Although in most cases, the images show what the person did during their lifetime.

For example, we see women surrounded by a group of children, and it is easy to guess that they are teachers. There are figures standing at looms, people with bread shovels in their hands standing by the stove, musicians with instruments, a doctor with a stethoscope, a farmer with a scythe, a hunter with a gun next to a deer or with a trumpet among animals. But there are also figures sitting with a friend at a table with a bottle on it. And it’s probably not milk inside 😉

And if we want to know that someone died under the wheels of a car, there is a picture of a girl falling under a car. All the images are in a naive-realistic style. None of them exude sadness; rather, they are tongue-in-cheek, intended to demystify death. They are meant to elicit a smile and reflection, not sadness.

I really regret not knowing Romanian, because the descriptions under the images are both funny and ironic. They describe how someone lived, what kind of person they were, what they did, how they died. And it’s really fascinating, but mothers-in-law don’t have good PR anywhere. Because even in this cemetery there is an entry about one of them:

Under this heavy cross,

My poor mother-in-law lies,

If she had lived three more days,

I would be lying here, and she would be reading this inscription.

You who are passing by,

Try not to wake her up.

Because if she returns home,

She will yell at me even more,

And I could somehow bear it,

But she will certainly not come out of this grave.

Stay here, my dear mother-in-law.

Cheerful Cemetery – all you have to know

• Entrance to the Merry Cemetery is subject to a fee of 5 lei (approximately 1.2 euros).
• The cemetery is open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
• There is a parking lot next to the cemetery, but on the street.