The architectural heritage of Rimetea

BY BUCHAREST ETWINNING TEAM

The architectural heritage of Rimetea constitutes the largest vernacular architectural heritage of the region formed of about 201 traditional buildings (out of the existing 315 properties), 170 of which are historic buildings with individual architectural and ethnographical value. The buildings placed on a historically valuable street pattern - divided to social neighborhoods - are grouped around squares and in rows of houses forming homogeneous ensembles surrounded by a natural landscape of an exceptional beauty.

Architectural and urban value of the settlement structure organized according to a medieval pattern, conserved almost unchanged during more than 600 years that derives from the traditional plot arrangement and land use. The street structure, the arrangement of the main and ancillary buildings as well as the use of courtyards are a unique synthesis of multiple cultural, social and historical effects. A medieval serf community that built its local economy on iron mining an manufacture of national importance created a settlement pattern comparable to those of medieval towns that is developing having a double character of a bourgeois-industrial town with its characteristic functions and of a village defined by its agricultural character and rich ethnographical heritage. Ethnographical value deriving from the movable heritage that belongs to historic buildings, such as painted local furniture (unique and characteristic to the place), local embroidery, very special and ornate traditional costumes.

Artistic, historic and ethnographic value of the cemetery, that is an example for a unique burial method connected to the mining past of the village, containing a large number of gravestones that are the fine examples of local art and ethnography over a span of 300 years. The graves exhibit different expression ways and styles that document the very rich history of the local community.