Prislop Pass, Mountain pass at 1416 meters in Eastern Carpathians, Romania.
Prislop Pass is a mountain pass in the Eastern Carpathians at 1,416 m elevation, linking Maramureș and Bukovina. It lies on DN18 between Borșa and Șesuri, on the ridge between Preluca Tătarilor and Stiol peak (1,611 m). The Maramureș side is steeper; the pass continues south with a gentler slope.
In March 1241, during the Mongol invasion, a Tatar column that had crossed into Transylvania by the Cârlibaba Pass split, and one part descended through Prislop Pass into Maramureș. Around 1915 the Austro-Hungarian army had Russian prisoners of war build a connecting railway between Borșa and Iacobeni over the pass, with a barracks settlement lit by electric generators at Prislop. The line was abandoned after the Kingdom of Romania took over the region, and its basic elements were reused in the interwar narrow-gauge railway on the Vaser.
The Roots Museum near the pass displays a collection of unusually shaped tree roots, military items from the world wars, and traditionally painted eggs. These objects give a concrete sense of local crafts and of the shared past of the communities on both sides of the crossing.
The pass lies on DN18 between Borșa to the west and Șesuri, in the Cârlibaba commune of Suceava county, to the east. The Maramureș side is steeper, while the slope descending southward is gentler. In 2013 the road surface between Moisei and Iacobeni, which includes the pass, was heavily degraded and needed major repairs. The nearest railway is Line 410, Vișeu de Jos to Borșa, in the Vișeu valley.
The Hora de la Prislop is held on the first Sunday after the Dormition of the Mother of God, at the end of August, not on a fixed third Sunday. The festival is documented as early as 1738, was banned from 1848, and was revived in 1968 through the efforts of history teacher and folklorist Nicoară Timiș and several intellectuals from Borșa.
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