A House Portrait from the Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum in Bucharest, Romania

by Jennifer Skopp

On a recent trip to Bucharest, Romania, Jennifer Skopp visited the Dimitrie Gusti National Village Museum. This outdoor museum features traditional Romanian village life by displaying relocated peasant houses, churches and workshops from different parts of Romania.

This cottage has two levels, but the bottom one looks like it might be for storage. The ground floor is covered with stones. There is a double door that looks like it is made of a white, metal grate and is curved on top. The staircase leads to the second level and is made of stone as well. It leads to the porch that has a wooden railing with intricate, geometric shapes cut out of the vertical pieces of wood. The window frames, door frame, railings, beams and vertical pieces of wood that support the roof, are all stained a dark brown.

There is a stone path that leads to the cottage and then border the front of the cottage. The left half of the house with the entrance, juts out from the right half of the house. Each half of the house has its own roof and both are black with shingles that are rounded on the bottom. The roof on the left side is a hip roof and the one on the right is a mansard roof.

There is grass on all sides of the cottage and the whole space is enclosed within a wooden fence. A garden in front sits right behind that fence.