{Where people are remembered with humor and happy goodbyes.}<\/p>\n
Sapanta, Romania – Hidden in a small valley of Transilvania’s Maramures County, the cemetery in the village of Sapanta has become a landmark in Northern Romania and an important tourist attraction.<\/p>\n
Established in the 1930s by Stan Ioan Patras, a local poet, sculptor and painter, the cemetery is not like any other in the world. Patras was a talented artist and locals hired him to carve the oakwood crosses for the graves of loved ones, which he also painted in bright colours on a deep blue background.<\/p>\n
At some point he started adding memorable and humorous accounts and limericks from the lives of the deceased on the crosses, or a depiction of the manner in which they had died.<\/p>\n
Over a period of 40 years, Patras finished hundreds of such works of art at the “happy cemetery”, which helps the community to mourn their dead by celebrating their lives.<\/p>\n
Patras died in 1977, but not before he had a chance to carve his own grave-cross with a poem, roughly translated as:<\/p>\n
Since I was a small boy,
\nPeople called me Stan Ion Patras.
\nHear me! O good people,
\nI wouldn’t tell you a lie.
\nAs long as I lived, I wished harm upon no one.
\nI wished only good,
\nas much as I could, upon everyone.
\nOh this poor old world of mine,
\nIt’s been a tough one.<\/p>\n
Today, there are more than 800 such crosses in the Sapanta cemetery, with Patras’ most talented apprentice, Dumitru Pop Tincu, ensuring the tradition is carried on. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Where people are remembered with humor and happy goodbyes.} Sapanta, Romania – Hidden in a small valley of Transilvania’s Maramures County, the cemetery in the village of Sapanta has become a landmark in Northern Romania and an important tourist attraction. Established in the 1930s by Stan Ioan Patras, a local poet, sculptor and painter, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24118"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24118"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}