# Ion Creangă Memorial Museum, Humulești > The Humulești house where Ion Creangă grew up, built around 1830 by his grandfather, Petrea Ciubotariul. A museum since 1951, restored in 2024, with the interior of a 19th-century peasant household. - Strada Ion Creangă nr. 8, Humulești, Târgu-Neamț - GPS: 47.19767, 26.354823 - Contact: 0333 130 215, secretariat@cmnn.ro - https://cmnn.ro/muzeu/muzeul-memorial-ion-creanga/ - Part of: Complexul Muzeal Național Neamț (https://neamt.tesseramo.com/) ## Opening hours Tuesday – Sunday: 10:00–18:00 (April – September), 9:00–17:00 (October – March). Closed on Mondays. **April – September: 04-01 – 09-30** - Monday: closed - Tuesday: 10:00–18:00 - Wednesday: 10:00–18:00 - Thursday: 10:00–18:00 - Friday: 10:00–18:00 - Saturday: 10:00–18:00 - Sunday: 10:00–18:00 **October – March: 10-01 – 03-31** - Monday: closed - Tuesday: 09:00–17:00 - Wednesday: 09:00–17:00 - Thursday: 09:00–17:00 - Friday: 09:00–17:00 - Saturday: 09:00–17:00 - Sunday: 09:00–17:00 ## Prices - Adult: 20 lei - Student / adult group: 10 lei - Child / pupil: 5 lei - Photography fee: 20 lei - Filming fee: 25 lei ## Accessibility The yard is accessible; the house has high thresholds. ## Visit - [Ion Creangă Memorial Museum, Humulești](https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/index.md?lang=en) - [Tickets online](https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/bilete.md?lang=en) - [Audio guide](https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/ghid.md?lang=en): 12 stops - [Indoor map](https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/harta-interioara.md?lang=en) - [Versiunea în română](https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/llms-full.txt) ## Audio guide ### 0. Welcome - Audio: 0:12 https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/ghid/ion-creanga-bun-venit?lang=en ### 1. The house in Humulești - Where: The porch and the outside of the house - Period: c. 1830 (heritage list: 1833) - Material: Fir beams, clay mixed with straw, lime; shingle roof - Audio: 1:05 https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/ghid/ion-creanga-casa-din-humulesti?lang=en "Sometimes I sit and remember what times and what people there were in our parts when I, dear Lord, was beginning to grow into a little boy in my parents' house, in the village of Humulești." With these words Ion Creangă opens his Childhood Memories, and the house he speaks of is this one. It was built around 1830 by his grandfather, Petrea Ciubotariul, and given as a wedding gift in 1835 to his son Ștefan, when he married Smaranda from Pipirig. Look at the walls: fir logs joined at the corners with dovetail joints, then plastered with clay mixed with straw and whitewashed. The four-sided roof is made of wooden shingles fixed with yew-wood pegs, and it reaches well beyond the walls, like a hat keeping off the rain. The windows are small and the back of the house faces north, to keep in warmth in winter and coolness in summer. Before going in, step onto the porch, where the family once sat to rest. ### 2. The centenary memorial plaque - Where: The porch and the outside of the house - Period: 1937 - Material: Marble - Audio: 1:15 https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/ghid/ion-creanga-placa-memoriala-de-la-centenar?lang=en On the east wall of the house you can see a marble plaque. It was placed here in 1937, a hundred years after Ion Creangă's birth, at the initiative of the historian Nicolae Iorga. It reads: "Here Ion Creangă was born and spent the years of his childhood, 1837–1889." At that time the house was not yet a museum. The writer's descendants still lived in it, and people of letters were already making pilgrimages to Humulești. In 1944 Sofia Grigoriu, the writer's niece, donated the house to the General Association of Romanian Teachers, "to protect for the future the house in which my own uncle, Ion Creangă, was born and grew up." The choice was fitting: before becoming a writer, Creangă was a deacon and, above all, a schoolteacher in Iași and an author of primers. Until 1951 the house was an unofficial museum, with visitors giving what they could towards its upkeep. In 1951 the Ion Creangă Memorial Museum officially opened. ### 3. The entrance room (tinda) - Where: The entrance room (tinda) - Period: 19th century - Material: Packed clay floor, woollen rag rugs - Audio: 0:58 https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/ghid/ion-creanga-tinda?lang=en You have entered the tinda, the entrance room, which we might call the ancestor of today's hallway. The house has only three rooms: this tinda, the living room and a pantry. Only one of them was truly lived in, even though eight children grew up here with their parents. Look down: the floor was not made of boards but of packed clay, covered with woollen rugs woven at home by the mother and sisters. The door is low and the windows are small: in the old days, instead of glass, a thin piece of pig's bladder was stretched across them, letting in only a little light. In winter the tinda kept the cold away from the room where the whole family slept. From here, in the Childhood Memories, little Nică set off for school, for a swim or, now and then, ran away from home. Continue into the living room, the heart of the house. ### 4. The stove, the hearth ledge and the oven-bed - Where: The living room - Period: 19th century - Material: Clay, brick, lime - Audio: 1:03 https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/ghid/ion-creanga-soba-cu-horn-prichiciul-si-cuptiorul?lang=en Listen to how Creangă remembered this corner of the house: "I don't know how others are, but when I think of the place where I was born, of my parents' house in Humulești, of the chimney post where Mother tied a string with tassels at the end, so the cats nearly burst playing with them, of the clay-washed hearth ledge I held on to when I was first learning to walk, of the oven-bed where I hid when we boys played hide-and-seek, and of other games and toys full of childish fun and charm, my heart still leaps with joy!" Look at the stove on the left: it heated the house, meals were cooked on it, and on the oven-bed the children slept on frosty nights. On the hearth the clay pots stand in their places, as if waiting to be used. The word humuit, clay-washed, comes from humă, the white clay found in abundance here, and which seems to have given the village of Humulești its very name. ### 5. The bed, the cradle and the rail of holiday clothes - Where: The living room - Period: 19th century - Material: Wood, wool and cotton textiles - Audio: 1:04 https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/ghid/ion-creanga-patul-leaganul-si-culmea-cu-straie?lang=en Also on the left side of the room you can see the plank bed and the cradle. The museum's curators point out that the cradle was an absolute necessity: the family of Ștefan a Petrei and Smaranda had eight children, so there was almost always a nursing baby in the house. Ion, whom everyone called Nică, was the eldest of the boys. Now look up at the rail, the wooden pole above the bed. That is where the holiday clothes hung, the folk costume of Neamț that people proudly wore to the village dance, on Sundays and at feasts. The same textiles went into the dowry chests of girls of marrying age, along with pillows, blankets and rugs. All of them were woven at home, on the loom, by the mother and daughters. In a single room people slept, cooked, worked and received guests. To us it looks cramped, but for the child Creangă this was the whole world. ### 6. The wall bench and the winter gatherings - Where: The living room - Period: 19th century - Material: Wood, woven rugs - Audio: 1:06 https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/ghid/ion-creanga-lavita-si-sezatorile-de-iarna?lang=en Along the east and south walls you can see a long wooden bench covered with woven rugs. It is called a lavița. On long winter evenings, neighbours and relatives gathered here for the șezătoare, the working get-together: the women spun, the men tinkered with something, and everyone told stories. As a child, Ion sat to one side, listening closely to proverbs, sayings, riddles and above all tales, which he would later turn into The Goat and Her Three Kids, The Purse with Two Coins or Harap-Alb. He had a phenomenal memory. A contemporary, N. A. Bogdan, recalled that Creangă "knew thousands upon thousands of folk verses, each more beautiful and funnier than the last." In a way, then, this bench was Creangă's first school of literature. His style, full of country speech, humour and rhythm, was born from listening on these evenings. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine the room full, the fire in the stove and an old man beginning: "Well now, they say there once was..." ### 7. Nică's prayer book - Where: The living room - Period: 19th century - Material: Printed church book - Audio: 1:06 https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/ghid/ion-creanga-ceaslovul-lui-nica?lang=en In the middle of the room there are two small tables. The low one, with four little stools, was where the family ate. On the taller one, in a place of honour, lies the ceaslov, the prayer book from which Ion Creangă learned to read at the village school in Humulești. The moment you see it, one of the funniest scenes of the Childhood Memories comes to mind: when the priest and the teacher were away, the boys sat in the churchyard with their prayer books open; the pages were rather greasy, so flies and bumblebees settled on them, and when the boys snapped the books shut, "ten or twenty souls perished at once – a flood upon the heads of the flies!" The priest was not at all pleased to see the stained books, and he "comforted" the pupils with Saint Nicholas, as the children called the whip kept on the table. Creangă later became a teacher and textbook author himself. Perhaps the humour with which he recalled school made him a gentler teacher. ### 8. The icon corner: Saint Nicholas, towels and bedstraw flowers - Where: The living room - Period: 19th century - Material: Icons painted on wood, woven towels, dried plants - Audio: 1:06 https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/ghid/ion-creanga-coltul-icoanelor-sfantul-nicolae-stergarele-si-sanzienele?lang=en Now look to the corner on the right, facing east. Here hang the family's old icons, painted on wood. One of them shows Saint Nicholas, patron of the village of Humulești. Above the icons and the windows hang ștergare, long towels woven and embroidered at home, a sign that a love of beauty existed in every household, however modest. Lift your eyes to the ceiling beam. Flowers were hung here: lady's bedstraw, mint, chrysanthemums and basil. They freshened the air and some were used for teas, but bedstraw had another role too. According to very old beliefs, evil spirits roamed around houses: the souls of those who had died without a candle or without a priest. So people hung bedstraw and garlic from the beam to guard the home. In Creangă's world, Christian faith and ancient custom lived side by side, and his stories are full of devils, saints and wonders. ### 9. The dowry chest and the spinning and weaving tools - Where: The living room - Period: 19th century - Material: Wood, wool, hemp - Audio: 1:04 https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/ghid/ion-creanga-lada-de-zestre-si-uneltele-de-tors?lang=en This room holds a few original objects that belonged to Ion Creangă's parents: the dowry chest, a storage chest, the yarn reel, the candlestick, the oil lamp, the combs and the bench. The dowry chest was important: in it a bride brought to her marriage the textiles she had woven over the years. Smaranda, the writer's mother, came from Pipirig and was, by her son's account, determined to see her boy become a priest. Now look at the spinning and weaving tools: the distaff, the spindle, the yarn reel. Every housewife had to have them. Wool from the sheep and hemp from the garden became clothes, towels, rugs and blankets. In the Childhood Memories the mother often appears spinning or weaving, while Nică slips away from chores whenever he can. These simple objects show how much labour lay behind the everyday life of a peasant family in the mid-nineteenth century. ### 10. The pantry and the attic - Where: The pantry and the way up to the attic - Period: 19th century - Material: Wood, clay; household objects - Audio: 1:07 https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/ghid/ion-creanga-camara-si-podul?lang=en The third room of the house is the pantry. This is where the family kept its provisions: flour, cheese, vegetables, dried fruit, everything needed for a long winter at the foot of the mountains. From the pantry you climbed into the attic. The curators tell us that at holidays, peasants used to set up smokehouses for meat and sausages in the attic. At the front of the roof there is a small ventilation opening called an ursoaică, through which the smoke escaped. For a hungry and mischievous child, the pantry was a place of temptation. Readers of the Childhood Memories will remember Nică's other exploits: the cherries stolen from Aunt Mărioara's tree, or the hoopoe from the linden tree. As you walk through the house, notice how small it really was. And yet, from this household came a boy who would become a deacon, a teacher, a close friend of Mihai Eminescu and one of the greatest storytellers in Romanian literature. ### 11. The yard: the sweep well, the cellar and the farm tools - Where: The farmyard - Period: 19th century - Material: Wood, stone; farm tools - Audio: 0:59 https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/ghid/ion-creanga-curtea-fantana-cu-cumpana-beciul-si-uneltele?lang=en Step out into the yard. The sweep well is one of the most characteristic sights of a Moldavian village: a long pole resting on a post, with a weight at one end and the bucket at the other, made drawing water almost effortless. Further on you can see the cellar, where pickles, wine and vegetables were kept cool. Behind the house, under a wooden roof, household objects and farm tools of great ethnographic value are on display, together with a cart. In a household like this, every member of the family, young or old, had chores to do. Nică was often sent to work, but he much preferred swimming in the Ozana river, which he described as flowing beautifully and clear as crystal. The yard helps you understand that the Childhood Memories is not only a book about a child, but also a portrait of an entire rural world. ### 12. The bust of Ion Creangă and the exhibition space - Where: The exhibition space and the writer's bust - Period: Ion Creangă: 1837–1889; exhibition opened 2024 - Material: Bust; photo and document panels, touchscreen, reproductions - Audio: 1:15 https://museu-ion-creanga.neamt.tesseramo.com/ghid/ion-creanga-bustul-lui-ion-creanga-si-spatiul-expozitional?lang=en We end the visit beside the bust of Ion Creangă. The boy from Humulești left home for schools in Târgu Neamț, Fălticeni and Iași, became a deacon, then a teacher, and wrote textbooks for children. In Iași he met Mihai Eminescu, who became his closest friend and brought him into the Junimea literary society. There, past the age of forty, Creangă began reading out his tales and memories. The Childhood Memories appeared in the review Convorbiri literare from 1881 onwards. The writer died in Iași on 31 December 1889, the same year as his friend Eminescu. In the exhibition space created when the museum reopened in June 2024, you will find panels of photographs and documents, reproductions and an interactive screen. We invite you to return to Humulești for the annual Ion Creangă Days, and to reread the Memories. Now that you have seen the house, every page will have a place, a smell and a light for you.