Cultural Port
Thematic dossier
Amber Amber Museum in Colți, Buzău
Text: Florin ENACHE
The trip
A few years ago, I went on a day trip to the Buzăului valley with the class I was a volunteer in "De-a arhitectura". In addition to the beauty of the landscape and the mix of large and small, colorful houses, we had a few sights: the Volcanii Noroioși, where we discussed the protected natural area, but also arid land, unsuitable for habitation and even the children concluded "There are no trees, there is nothing green... you can't live here".
Our plan was to discuss architecture and housing. Our next objective was the Aluniș cave complex, where they saw some hobbit dwellings hollowed out in the rock, who knows how many hundreds of years ago.
During all this journey, we visited the Casa cu Blazoane in the area, which was not exactly a country house as they had imagined, and so they discovered a manor house, but also another house built in an architecture specific to the area, which has been a museum since its beginnings.
More than 40 years ago, the community of Colți, Buzău, built the Amber Museum. That's how I discovered, somewhere, well hidden in the hills, 10 km from the national road, an "old" house with its porch facing the sun, between the tall pines, a fairytale place... but which seemed to have been abandoned somewhere in the past.
We were hours into the bus ride and invariably the question was put to our host, who greeted us with typical Montenegrin hospitality. The children wanted to know... where the toilet was.
"That wooden cabin in the corner of the courtyard."
That's how we began to realize that this corner of heaven needed us. And we did! The trip ended well and with super memories, but my thoughts remained on the "duty" of trying to find out who owns the museum and how I could support, if I could be allowed, to bring "normality" here where I had learned that over 20,000 visitors a year come...
There was something else. There was the fact that I have deep roots here in these hills, and I felt it imperative to do what I could to make sure that the tourists who come here leave with the joy of a beautiful experience and want to linger in the area.
City and County
The trip was over, but I kept coming back to find out who I needed to talk to in order to bring the 21st century to Colți, because in tourism, the basics should never, under any circumstances, be missing.
Things seemed to be deadlocked between the owner of the building, the Colți Town Hall, which did not have the funds for significant interventions, and the tenant, which was the County Museum - the owner of the museum collection, subordinated to the County Council, which paid a tiny rent and had no way of investing legally in the building.
It took almost a year of promoting this fairy-tale place in all directions and during this time the County Council found the solution to take over the building and allocate a budget for the following year. We gathered around the table at #NOVEMBarh some inspiring people: the mayor, the curator, fellow architects from the OAR Rural Group who told about the local architecture guide, we came back with groups of friends. We tried our best to "dust the dust".
We succeeded!
Two more years went by, it was a laborious process undertaken by the County Museum, because of the procedures to relocate the "treasure" in order to be able to intervene on the building. In the meantime, there was another #NOVEMEMBarh edition in which we were already discussing the renovated and modernized Museum and the "why would I stay here a little longer", the impact, horizontally. for the local community economy. That's how I met many people who are doing things in the area and discovered the Buzăului Landscape UNESCO Geo-park project and realized that we are pulling, all of us, in the right direction.
Today, the Chihlibarului Museum has reached almost 1,000 visitors per week, it has toilets worthy of the 21st century, central heating and, in the near future, it will even install a centralized vacuum cleaner, becoming the second museum in Romania, after Peléș, with a "vacuum cleaner". And the fence is new, and many other things you must see.
The interventions are discreet, the building didn't need significant works, but rather new clothes, new utilities. The display of the collection is modern, worthy of a museum display of international caliber.
Our aim was to bring as many premium solutions as possible, to show that somewhere in the wooded hills, far from civilization, the tourist can discover, to his surprise, that the place is well cared for and blessed. The experience of visiting here is all the more surprising.
Of course, in these lines, I have only captured the essence of an experience with its ups and downs, barriers, but also unexpected solutions, openness and involved people. The outcome and the reactions of the visitors make it worth all the effort and make us wish to bring even more specialists together here and have a model of good practice and a reason for a rebirth of local and, why not, national dignity.
Architecture remains a generator of wellbeing, but without the daily, less visible effort of those who keep the house clean, who open the door to guests and bring the place to life, our efforts are futile.
