ASTRA Museum, Open-air ethnographic museum in Sibiu, Romania.
ASTRA Museum is an open-air ethnographic museum spread across extensive grounds, featuring over 400 traditional buildings transported from various regions across Romania. The structures include dwellings, churches, workshops, and utility buildings that together convey a complete picture of rural life.
Founded in 1963, the museum was established to preserve Romania's rural heritage by collecting buildings, tools, and household items from vanishing villages. This collecting effort grew over decades into a living archive of traditional Romanian culture.
The workshops showcase traditional Romanian crafts where visitors watch artisans at work: potters shaping clay, weavers working looms, and craftspeople carving wood or forging metal. This living heritage gives visitors a sense of how these skills were once central to daily village life.
The grounds are extensive, so visitors should wear comfortable shoes and plan for several hours of exploration, especially to see the scattered buildings and different sections. It helps to start with orientation signage or join a guided tour to navigate the different zones effectively.
The museum houses several functioning water mills that still operate using natural stream power, showing how grain was milled in earlier times. These mills are active working sites rather than static displays, allowing visitors to see the machinery in operation.
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