Tradition and Continuity at the Neculai Popa Museum in Târpești

Folk craftsman Neculai Popa succeeded throughout his life in passing on his love for the traditional values of our nation’s culture and spirituality.

He was a consummate artist and a passionate collector of authentic folk art and folklore objects, which we can admire in the museum founded in the seventies in his homestead in Târpești. Here, Neculai Popa brings the Târpești of former times back to life through traditions associated with evening gatherings and communal work gatherings, balls and folk dances on ordinary days and holidays, the departure of recruits for the army, engagements, weddings or funerals.

The scent of bygone times envelops visitors already at the entrance to Târpești, an area once traversed by voivode Stephen the Great on his way to Războieni, the place where a sad page of Moldavian history was written.

As visitors wander through the village’s lanes into a world seemingly forgotten by technology, they remain fascinated by the magic of folklore that endures in these places. Fresh air drifting over the warm colours of the landscape, traditional houses that speak of people and life, and the surrounding nature that seems to protect the site’s uniqueness turn visitors into genuine seekers of spiritual treasures. In this atmosphere stands the Neculai Popa House Museum, a place where the past of a family and the whole community is preserved.

Neculai Popa Museum, Neamț County

Visitors can visit the House with Masks, built at the beginning of the 20th century, which houses most of Neculai and Elena Popa’s creations, from masks and costumes for Christmas and New Year shows and naïve wooden and stone sculptures made over the years to the collection of embroidered waistcoats with traditional decorative motifs from the Neamț area. Adjacent to it, visitors can also visit the House of Collections, built in 1974, which houses most of the Popa Museum’s collections of archaeology, numismatics, ethnography, religious objects and naïve painting.

Neculai Popa together with his wife Elena Popa, over the course of their lives, gathered, bought and sought history in order to exhibit it and pass it on to Romanians. They have bequeathed us the history of Târpești, a living and authentic history that tourists can discover by visiting these sites.