Open gates at the Gurghiu Castle!

You might have thought that after so many cultural programs during the last month (TIME BOX and other exhibition openings, Night of the Museum, etc.) you’ll be able to rest a little in June. Well, of course you can, but we strongly advise you not to. Here’s why:

On the 3^rd of June (Friday) 2016, between 10 AM and 6 PM, the Mureș County Museum invites you to the ”Day of Open Gates” at the Rákóczi–Bornemisza Castle in Gurghiu.

The event will feature the presentation of the restoration and further development plans of the castle, furthermore the visitors will be able to enjoy the tour of the castle followed by numerous museum-pedagogical activities between 10 AM and 5 PM .

The highlight of the evening will begin at 5 PM with the show of the jazz band Footprints – Ana Maria Galea duo, featuring Ana Maria Galea (vocals) and Daniel Csikos (piano).

See you there!

A day with dr. Bones

The Long Night of Museums is getting closer with every day (and every night), so we’d just like to get your attention a bit on this new exhibition, which will be opened on Friday, the 20^th  of May 2016, at 2 PM in the exhibition hall of the Mureș County Museum from the Castle, and where many of our team-members are involved as well. This time the theme revolves around human bones and anthropology, the exhibition even having the title: ‘A day with dr. Bones’.

The exhibition presents the early history of physical anthropology in Europe, with special focus on the territory of Romania. The visitors will get a glimpse into the essential research methods of osteology and also into some of the more intriguing pathological cases, while getting to know the unbelievable abilities of the human skeletal system.

So see you there!

The TIME BOX exhibitions in Călugăreni

We cannot express how glad and happy we are about the freshly launched TIME BOX exhibitions in the new pavilions at Călugăreni. The opening ceremony, held on the 6^th of May, was of a great success as more than 100 visitors participated, and we even had the luck to have a sunny weather throughout the whole process.

It seems that hard work does pay off, and after long weeks of putting it together, now finally we are able to present for the visitors through these time boxes what the Romans had been doing here in Călugăreni, and also what we have been doing in the past few years.

We tried, and as the feedback shows, we succeeded in presenting the daily life within a Roman military fort or in the bath house in a way that is easily understandable and also very informative for everyone, and not least, quite fun for children and adults as well.

Also, the visitors didn’t have to leave with an empty stomach, delicious Roman lentil-dish was served for everyone, which was even better as the storm just hit the village the moment everyone got inside the restaurant. Fortunately no one got soaked and everyone truly enjoyed this mid-day cultural escape of the city’s loud mess.

And the best of it all, the exhibition remains there for a while, so if you didn’t manage to come to the opening, you still have the chance to visit it later on!

Open exhibition: Identity and Culture 3.

On the 5^th of May we had the honour to open the third part of the Identity and Culture exhibition, entitled New landscapes, new dimensions, together with Cicelle Gaul and Zsolt Vasáros, professors of the Department of Industrial and Agricultural Building Design (of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics). This year’s projects really brought some fresh air into the atmosphere, as now the architecture-students had the opportunity to integrate two new Roman sites.

The first one was the Roman watchtower on the Tompa Hill, where the limes and the World War I trenches are going parallel, very close to each other. The main task was to present these very similar defensive lines in a way that also shows the centuries-old differences. The other site was the Roman fort of Brâncovenești, where one had to integrate into the plan the medieval castle as well.

The projects turned out really interesting and nice, with lots of great new ideas regarding the possibilities of integrating these sites into the current cultural landscape.

So, if you’re interested, come and see the mock-ups and plans in the exhibition hall of the Mureș County Museum from the Castle, until the 30th of May!

Identity and Culture: New Landscapes, New Dimensions – 5th of May 2016

The Mureș County Museum is pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition entitled ‘Identity and culture. New landscapes, new dimensions’, held on Thursday the 5^th of May 2016, at 5 PM in the exhibition hall of the Mureș County Museum from the Castle.

The exhibition will feature the results of the cooperation between the students and teachers of the Department of Industrial and Agricultural Building Design of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. The projects propose different possibilities for the touristic valorization of the archaeological sites from Mureș County, once part of the defensive system of Roman Dacia, in the same time integrating them into the current cultural landscape.

The exhibition will be open between the 5^th and the 30^th of May.

TIME BOX opening on the 6^th of May!

The Mureș County Museum is pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition entitled ‘TIME BOX’, which will take place on the 6th of May 2016, starting at 12 PM in the Archaeological Park from Călugăreni (Eremitu commune, Mureș County).
The event, organized within the framework of the research project ‘Digitizing the Roman limes. Sector: Brâncovenești‒Sărățeni’, will be hosted by the two temporary pavilions erected last year in the outskirts of the village. These structures were based on a prize-winning project presented at the student competition organized by the Department of Industrial and Agricultural Building Design of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and aimed at proposing innovative solutions for the presentation of the Roman ruins of Călugăreni. The main aim was the creation of an unconventional space which would become a landmark in the rural environment, but also a symbol for the archaeological park.
The exhibitions from the two pavilions dedicated to the auxiliary fort and the Roman bath house will offer the visitors insight into different aspects of Roman civilian and military daily life, at the same time presenting some of the results of the archaeological investigations carried out here.

Financed by: The Mureș County Council; The Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI).

Main sponsors: Kronospan, Sidó György Landscape Gardening.

Renaissance school, differently

Children can be very enthusiastic about history and also, what can be bigger fun than creating your own Renaissance initial?

On the 20^th of April, members of our team presented some of the highlights of the Renaissance Era in the “Bethlen Gábor” School from Odorheiu Secuiesc, as part of the “School, Differently” program. After the intriguing presentation about Renaissance in general and the monuments in the vicinity that carry the marks of this period, two workshops followed: the first was to create a genealogical tree to which each student could add a coat of arms. These, of course, were made after the established laws of the heraldic. The other workshop consisted of the design and painting of personalized initials, where some of the students used the existing patterns, others drew totally new ones.

Each initial and painting was unique, recreating the air of long past centuries and offering a great day to all participant of this event.

Spring on the field!

Not just the bees and beetles get out in the nature with the first beams of the sun – we do so as well. April 2016 was the month appointed for all the field-related tasks: we’ve been field-walking in Sărățeni and Brâncovenești and a bit in Călugăreni, going into gardens and freshly ploughed fields, with the 25 x 25 m grid-system or without, as the situation demanded it. These results help us refine our knowledge about the extent of the settlements neighbouring the forts. We also tracked on a larger portion the roads that supposedly connect these castra. Besides this, we managed to locate (and measure with the help of a GPS) the exact locations of most of the excavations undertaken in the 1970’s and 1980’s at Brâncovenești, which again helps a lot in the geo-referencing process. In the meantime for two weeks the geophysicists from Budapest (Eötvös Loránd University) were our guests, conducting surveys at all three military forts of this sector.

So it looks like what we wanted to do we already accomplished with these spring-time field surveys, we still have to make a selection of the collected pottery and record the small finds, but these too are in process right now.

And then we’re also eagerly preparing the exhibition for the Time Box pavilions in Călugăreni, but we’ll tell you more about that later on…