Premium
The city of Timisoara will be an European Capital of Culture (ECC) in 2023, on which occasion it will welcome visitors with a new museum, especially built just a few kilometers from Timisoara, in Parta, where there will be placed a replica of the Neolithic Sanctuary from Parta, unique in the world, told Agerpres.
The museum will be ready in December.
"Visitors will see a replica of this unique sanctuary in the world, through which we can find out how our ancestors used a location 12 thousand years ago to pray and perform different religious rituals. The original is located at the National Museum of Banat (MNB) and it should also be moved [to the new museum - editor's note]. Besides the sanctuary there will also be exhibitions related to the archaeological diggings, and in addition to these exhibitions we want the new museum to be like a research base for future generations and for those who still want to do diggings at Parta, on the site, because only a small part of the things there has been uncovered. We are only starting to built the replica now, because we still hope to be able to convince archaeologist Gheorghe Lazarovici, who is the scientist at the MNB responsible for the replica, to also allow us to move the sanctuary from the replica of the sanctuary in the castle. The restoration is going very quickly, in a maximum of three weeks it will be ready, we have the people, we have the plan, we have everything," MNB head Claudiu Ilas stated on Wednesday.
The archaeological site of Parta is known through discoveries of archaeological materials from the second half of the 19th century. The sanctuary was discovered by the unveiling of the monumental statue which immediately stood out as an exceptional architectural element. The results of the archaeological investigation proves the existence of two main stages of the sanctuary, overlapping, both belonging to the Middle Neolithic, of which the second had two stages of restoration. The initial sanctuary was probably burned down and rebuilt later, in the form of a building with several rooms erected around a monumental statue that was made of sandy soil covered by a layer of chaff. The preserved elements of the sanctuary were integrated into its reconstruction in one of the halls of the Huniade Castle, but the dimensions of the hall did not allow the reconstruction of the sanctuary on a real scale.
"The uniqueness of the Parta sanctuary is due to cultural peculiarities. It is unique in that the cultural aspect that is in Parta is unique, but the uniqueness also depends on a stage of research. There are other sanctuaries in Europe, but Parta is a special place because there are several monuments with a spiritual function there, many objects that belong to this spiritual domain are found in Parta. It is also a very big excavation that was done there and much more things can be exhibited in a museum dedicated to the Neolithic,' the former manager of the MNB, Leopold Ciobotaru, told AGERPRES.
According to him, there are several sanctuaries in the county, the most famous being those at Uivar and Cornesti, each with its own particularities. He also specified that especially foreign tourists are attracted to the Parta sanctuary.
"There are people who deal with centres of spiritual energy, of original, primitive, native culture. They come to Parta, buy books about Parta and publish abroad about Parta, because it is one of the important European centres of this kind," mentioned Leopold Ciobotaru.
The new museum in Parta is being built within the INTERREG IPA Romania-Serbia Cross-border Cooperation Programme and benefits from a total funding of 762,660 euros and will be served by 100 employees, estimating over 10 thousand visitors in the first five years.
