ASTRA Museum of Traditional Folk Civilisation
Open-air museum in Dumbrava forest with more than 400 relocated vernacular buildings.
The ASTRA Museum of Traditional Folk Civilisation occupies about 96 hectares of the Dumbrava forest south of Sibiu. It was established in 1963, building on the ethnographic collections of the ASTRA cultural association founded in 1861, and opened to the public in 1967. Houses, workshops, mills, churches and farm buildings were dismantled in villages across Romania and re-erected along a network of paths around a lake, arranged by trade and region rather than by geography alone.
More than 400 structures now stand in the grounds, including watermills and windmills, oil and fulling presses, potteries, a wooden church and several inns. The museum is the largest open-air museum in Romania and one of the biggest in Europe. It forms part of the ASTRA National Museum Complex, which also runs the Multicultural Museum Pavilion at the entrance, the House of Arts and the Franz Binder Museum of World Ethnography in central Sibiu. Craft demonstrations and seasonal fairs run through the year.
Highlights
- Over 400 vernacular buildings moved from villages across Romania
- Watermills, windmills and presses set around a lake
- Ninety-six hectares of the Dumbrava forest to walk through
- Part of a complex including the House of Arts in the old town
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