The north, along the border with Ukraine. Wooden churches with shingle spires, carved gates in front of ordinary houses, and villages where haymaking is still done by hand — not for tourists, but because that is how it is done.
Eight of them are on the UNESCO list. They were built without a single nail, with spires that go up forty metres and interiors painted by village craftsmen. Most are still parish churches, so services come first and visits fit around them.
Blue crosses, each with a carved picture and a rhyme about the person buried there — some affectionate, some blunt about how they lived or died. It is a cemetery, and we visit it as one.
The monastery at Bârsana is entirely of wood and recent, built in the 1990s in the old manner. In the villages around it, the tall carved gates in front of houses are not decoration: the rope, the tree of life and the sun each mean something, and the people who carved them will tell you what.
Nothing here is a fixed package. Tell us how many days you have and what you want to see, and we will put a route together. Ask for a quote.