Surdesti

This village has a fascinating past but if you drive through it on the main Baia Mare-Cavnic road you’ll miss the best bits. Tucked away down a side road and cloaked by mature walnut trees there is a magnificent 18th century wooden church with a double roof and a 34m high tower. It was once the tallest timber construction in Europe, but since the 1989 revolution, in a spate of rivalry, Maramureş builders have erected taller spires on the churches at Plopiş, the new Bârsana monastery and most recently at Săpânţa (the last, 78m high, being completed in 2003). Even so, this church is remarkable and it is one of several timber shrines in Maramureş listed by UNESCO.

Şurdeşti contains many attractive farm houses made of timber with wattle and daub walls. Thanks to encouragement from ethnographers such as the Iugas, Şurdeşteni are starting to value their own culture and traditions to the extent of preserving them: they are collecting old family photos, home-made textiles and other items of family history. It will all help to give their descendants a sense of who they are and where they came from.

Near the village is a cliff face; at the bottom, hidden among the trees, there are rocks and caves which were used as shelter by prehistoric people - they carved strange signs into the stone walls and left the burn marks of their fires. It’s possible that the village name has connections with the Thracian word for sun, and that sun-worshipping rituals took place there.