ASTRA National Museum Complex - History

History

The Romanian cultural association ASTRA decided in 1897 to establish a museum of Romanian civilisation as a "shelter for keeping the past". The museum was opened in 1905, under the supervision of Cornel Diaconovici, in what is today the ASTRA Palace in Sibiu, built through a public subscription with the specific purpose of creating a museum. In 1929, in Cluj, an open air Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania was created and in 1932 the Village Museum was opened in Bucharest by Dimitrie Gusti.

In 1940, after the loss of Northern Transylvania to Hungary due to the Second Vienna Award, a plan was proposed to establish a new ethnographic museum in Sibiu to replace the one in Cluj. World War II and the new communist government of Romania delayed the establishment of the new museum by 20 years, in which period the old ASTRA Museum was closed due to ideological reasons. Due to the work of Cornel Irimie in the late 1950s and early '60s, the Romanian Academy decided to pursue the project of establishing the Sibiu open-air museum, having folk technology as its main theme. The Folk Technology Museum (the Romanian word is more literally "technique", because in Romanian technologie has specifically modern connotations)was established in and was opened to the public in 1967. Until 1990 the museum worked as a branch of the Brukenthal Museum Complex and in this period it increased the number of houses and buildings. Beginning in 1971, it started to orient itself towards folk civilisation by also including elements of folk life such as houses and community buildings. Since 2001 the museum has functioned as a museum complex, also comprising the "Franz Binder" Museum of Universal Ethnography, the "ASTRA" Museum of Transylvanian Civilisation, both opened in 1993, and the "Emil Sigerus" Museum of Saxon Ethnography and Folk Art opened in 1998. Since 1990 it has used the ASTRA name to reflect its heritage.