Last Updated on mai 5, 2014
Being a historical and art monument, the Museum of the Customs is situated at the foot of the Bran Castle, Brasov County (central Romania), on the road connecting Transylvania to Muntenia.
This road had a special commercial importance in the Middle Ages as it connected the Near East to Central Europe so that here there was one of the most important customs in Mediaeval Europe.
Being an architectural complex, the building of the museum is made of stone and brick and is made up of a central part, basement, ground floor, the first floor and three annexes and an ethnographic park.
The buildings of the Customs and the Bran fortress were managed by the Forest Range from the end of the 19th century till December 1, 1920, when it became the property of Queen Marie. It grew by some annexes and one new floor. The inventories of the time showed the fact that inside there were pieces of various origins, most of them disappeared after 1948 and only few of them were kept in the collection of the museum.
Between 1944 and 1948 the building of the customs became the house of Princess Ileana’s family and after the Royal Family left Romania (December 1947), it was assigned to the Ministry of Forestry.
The institution was only restored as a museum in 1987 when the ‘Bran Customs’ exhibition was opened in a few rooms on the ground flood of the central pavilion. (Agerpres)
In the buildings known as the Bran Mediaeval Customs there was a museum, as a section of the Bran National Museum, from 1987 till 1998, when, because of the degradation of the building, the collection was moved to the administrative headquarters and in storehouses and the building underwent a far-reaching process of restoration that lasted till 2008.
In May 2009 they inaugurated the new Museum of the Mediaeval Customs, subordinated to the Ministry of Culture, Cults and National Heritage. It was here that the collections of the Bran Castle were moved, which became the property of Dominic of Hapsburg, son of Archduke Anton of Hapsburg and of Princess Ileana of Romania, daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Marie. In the castle there were more than 6,000 valuable pieces, only a few hundred of them are exhibited at the Museum of the Customs. Very valuable pieces dating back from 1290 to 1930, in the treasure category, were exhibited in nine exhibition rooms. In the new museum they preserved the interior of the old castle, namely the bedrooms of King Ferdinand and Queen Marie, the Rococo Room, the Biedermeier Room, the Royal Dining Room, the subjects and the pieces of the basic exhibition being the ones exhibited at the Bran Castle. In King Ferdinand’s bedroom they preserved the original canopy and all the furniture that had belonged to him.
A special moment was the bringing to the headquarters of the museum of the box containing the heart of Queen Marie, in order to be displayed in a niche that was specially arranged in the bedroom of Queen Marie. An icon given as a gift to the National Museum of Romania’s History by Queen Ana in 2007 was also lent to the Bran Castle.
The collections of the castle exhibited in the nine rooms of the Museum of the Customs include objects of decorative art (furniture, ceramics, silverware) and fine arts (sculpture and painting on wood). Also on display are historical documents of the Bran Castle, seals, weapons, mediaeval coins, national dress and collections of jewels, but also measure instruments and means of transport existing in the Middle Ages.
The Museum of the Customs at Bran is one of the most important sightseeing spots at Bran-Moeciu and it can be visited between April and October.
