Unitarian Area

You are standing in front of the Unitarian Parish House. Rebuilt in 1933, the Unitarian Parish House replaced an older structure, probably built before the end of the 18th century and mentioned in documents from the mid-19th century when the first plan of the settlement was made. The new house partially integrated the lower level of the old house, including the rear cellar, with thick walls and a vaulted roof.

The house typifies late 19th to early 20th-century construction in Rosia Montana, featuring a simple, minimally ornamented facade with aligned rectangular windows and a gable roof framed by carved wooden elements. While the street-facing facade reflects urban organization, the rear maintains traditional porch access to aligned rooms. Since the 1990s, sporadic inhabitation and minimal maintenance have led to severe deterioration, particularly in the roof and structural elements, with fractures and detachment in the facade masonry, and damage to wooden walls and floors.

Fortunately for the building in front of you, in 2007 the restoration work began. This is the year when the ARA NGO initiated documentation and intervention actions dedicated to the historical site of Rosia Montana. Over time, it became the headquarters of the Adopt a House program and the annual summer schools that brought over 1500 students, volunteers, specialists, and people eager to get involved in the restoration of the historical heritage of the site. 

In front of the parish house, you will find a wonderful building with extensive facade decoration and a central wooden gate porch. It is the Former Hungarian School, one of the first schools in the village and it still  holds many memories for the village elders. Like the Unitarian Parish House, it is also a historical monument and deserves a better fate, commensurate with its past and its unique appearance, as fascinating and imposing as it is for a rural area.

On the paved alley that outlines on the right side of the road, you reach the Unitarian Church in just a few seconds. Here, we must begin our little journey by telling you that a first Unitarian church, made of wood, was built as early as 1568, followed by a stone building set on fire in 1784 and replaced by the existing building today, erected in 1796.

The architecture of the church is imposing due to its simple volume, cut into extensive surfaces devoid of any decoration and articulated in a balanced composition, dominated by the vertical of the tower. Its baroque roof, in two registers, alongside the roof of the access portico on the northeastern side, give the monument its characteristic note. On the access facade of the tower, two epigraphic plaques are mounted, attesting to the age of the monument: the first is an inscription in Hungarian installed on the occasion of the church's renovation in 1958, the second records only the date of construction of the current building: 1796. 

The sober monumentality of the interior space is tempered by the historic furniture elements, among which the pulpit and the organ (installed in 1862) are remarkable.

You have listened to the content dedicated to Rosia Montana’s  Unitarian area.

The UNESCO tour of Rosia Montana is a project implemented by the non-governmental organization ‘Rosia Montana in Patrimoniul Mondial’. The audio-tour is co-financed by Romania’s Administration for National Cultural Funds. We based our story telling on local anecdotes and the works listed on the bibliography on our website. We encourage you to follow the trail that we prepared for you via our website. This will ensure that you discover all objects and their stories of Rosia Montana. Have a pleasant journey and ‘drum bun’ as we say here.