”Simion Florea Marian” Memorial House

casa simion florea marian ext 2

interior sflm (1)

Located in a building which is a historic monument of the 18th century, also named the house earned by writing, it was opened to the public on the 22nd of June 1974, under the following name: ” Simion Florea Marian” memorial-documentary collection. The place where he wrote his work, which is fundamental and intangible in the Romanian culture, was the home of the priest and scholar since 1866 and until the end of his life (1907).

With the money received after winning the prize Năsturel Herescu (4000 lei gold) awarded by the Romanian Academy for the work Romanian Folk Ornithology, Simion Florea Marian (1847-1907) bought an old, but stable and large house in Suceava, the house between the trees, surrounded by a wonderful garden, in the centre of the city, near Saint Nicholas Church and the Greek-Oriental Gymnasium, where he was a teacher. The place registered in the Cadastral Register in 1796 and marked on the Cadastral Map of the city at number 329 in 1856 is one of the few constructions of the 18th century which exists in Suceava, former property of the Armenian baron Ariton Kapri. Left as inheritance to his two sons, Johan and Georgi, it was vended for the payment of some urgent debts. It was bought by Simion Florea Marian on the 12th of August 1886 and restored for the first time between 1887 and 1889.

The building shelters a valuable memorial and documentary collection with six rooms (period furniture, family and personal belongings, books, periodical publications, manuscripts, correspondence, photos, personal, cultural and historical documents, etc.). It reconstitutes Simion Florea Marian’s life and creative activity, one in the service of the culture of the Romanian People. Teacher and priest, member of the Romanian Academy, he wrote unique works, synthesis works which represent reference points in the Romanian culture: Folk poems in Bukovina (1869), The chromatics of the Romanian people (1882), Romanian folk ornithology (1883, vol. I-II), Romanian folk charms (1886), The birth at the Romanian people (1892), The wedding at the Romanian people (1890), The funeral at the Romanian people (1892), Spells, charms and disentchantments (1893), Romanian folk satires (1893), Romanian folk costumes in Bukovina (1895), Religious feasts at Romanian people (1898-1901, vol. I-III), The insects in the language, faiths and costumes of the Romanians (1903), The Legends of the Mother of God (1904), Romanian round dances and improvised shouts in Bukovina (1910, posthumous edition), Romanian folk botany, vol. I-III (2008-2010, princeps edition). Simion Florea Marian writes like nobody else about birth, wedding, funeral ceremony, Christian and not Christian feasts, mythology, disentchantments, spells and charms, Romanian lyrical folk music, stories, legends and historic traditions, chromatics, ornithology, entomology, botany and zoology, influencing generations of researchers. (dr. Aura Brădăţan)