Golești Museum Complex, Golești, Argeș

1. Goleștilor Church

Before entering the courtyard, you can cross the street to visit Goleștilor Church. It is dedicated to the Holy Trinity. It was built in 1646 by the craftsman Stoica and is the foundation of Stroe Leurdeanu and Visei from Golești. In the tombs in the pronaos of the church, rest prominent members of the Golescu family.

2. The watchtower (18th-19th century)

The guard's gazebo rises just above the entrance gate to the museum courtyard. A wooden staircase leads upstairs, where a balcony circumscribes the building, offering panoramic views of the site. A flag flies proudly over the gazebo.

Here, on May 21, 1821, Tudor Vladimirescu was arrested, betrayed on the way of retreat from Bucharest to the mountains of Oltenia. Being on good terms with the Golești boyars, Tudor Vladimirescu set up camp at Golești. He was betrayed by members of the Etheria and some of his own Pandits. He was arrested by Alexandru Ipsilanti's men. He was to be tried in Targoviste, but was assassinated on the way.

Upstairs is a room decorated in the style of the time.

3. The Goleștilor Rotunda

Somewhere slightly to the left is a small circular square decorated with the busts of the Goletis. This is Goleștilor Rotunda.

4. Goleștilor Mansion (17th century)

This is where the bulk of the visit takes place. Goleștilor Mansion it was built in 1640 in the pre-Brâncovenesque architectural style by the great coachman Stroe Leurdeanu and his wife Visha. The builder was the craftsman Stoica. The Goleștilor Manor is the only fortified medieval secular building in the country and is surrounded by high brick walls and defense towers. The manor was restored in the 1940s and is in very good condition compared to other manors in the country. On display here are personal belongings of the Golescu family, period furniture, manuscripts and books, most of the objects having been donated by descendants of the family or other relatives.

The manor house is a multi-storied building, with a cellar in the basement, a former wine cellar. We first went up to the slightly elevated ground floor where the porch is presented in a framed picture of the Golescu family tree, which begins with the falconer Baldovin in 1495, lord of Goleștilor de Muscel and lasts over many generations until the end of the 19th century, although many of the family's ancestors have left no descendants.

Enter first into a very wide hallway. Here a spiral wooden staircase leads upstairs. Also of interest are the whitewashed pottery stoves, built into the wall between the rooms and the hallway, simultaneously heating two spaces.

On either side of the hall are several rooms, which have taken on distinct themes within the museum. Thus we will go in turn through the guest reception room, the working room of the Golești brothers, the room of Zincăi and Dinicu Golescu, the Davila family room, the winter dining room including the throne room and the royal office, the oriental room. I will not describe each of these in detail. I will only point out that they are particularly interesting and well presented and I invite you to appreciate them in the attached pictures. I particularly liked the oriental room and the room, which houses the king's office.

5. The cellar and the dungeon

After this fascinating incursion into the history of the Romanians and the Goleștilor family, we will go down through the back of the manor into the cellar, where you can admire some wine barrels and the architecture typical of such a half-dug-in-the-ground cave. The visit to this site touches a few more interesting points.

The Little Village is a space designed to remember the care that the great banker Radu Golescu gave to the care of places for the sick regardless of their social status, covering the costs of providing a doctor to treat the suffering and their medication.

6. Turkish Bath

Another point visited is Turkish Bath, where we were able to notice how well preserved this place has been, where the functionality of these three centuries old bathrooms can be deduced. The bathroom has a square shape and a vaulted ceiling.

Following the Turkish bath you reach one of the defense towers.

7. Village School

The village school is shown to the right of the entrance. A great merit had Banul Radu Golescu, who was the first Romanian man of culture. who developed the village school.

8. Annex spaces in the courtyard of the manor

On two of the inner sides of the courtyard of the manor there are several annex buildings. In them we found a series of museums and temporary exhibitions, such as: a room with a spectacular and meticulously made diorama of electric trains, presented by its maker, then an ethnography museum, a museum of toys, a painting exhibition of Lidia Zadeh Petrescu, the Sons and Honorary Citizens of Arges County Exhibition, the History Exhibition of the Golescu Family and a carriage that belonged to King Carol I.

9. Outdoor Section

From the courtyard in which the manor house is located, you pass through an arched brick gate into a garden. The landscaped path crosses a small pond on a wooden bridge and leads to a space where various school or cultural activities are organized under a huge gazebo. There are wooden benches and tables. You can create, rest, be a spectator at an event or activity. You can sit on benches or on the grass in the orchard. To the left of the alleyway, which I entered, there is a memorial to the Goleștilor Family and a 4-seater vertical swing. Next to the fence there is a gazebo with benches and a large clean toilet.

10. Museum of Viticulture and Pomiculture

A museum in itself, vast, and with a separate theme, but part of the same Golești museum complex, is Museum of Viticulture and Pomiculture,

It also has a separate entrance, but visitors can get here from the orchard shown above, heading to the left as they came up the driveway, through the large, wide-open old wooden gate.

The Museum of Viticulture and Pomiculture is actually a museum of the Romanian village with little houses from different wine and fruit-growing regions of the country, placed on the ground just like on the map of Romania.

Here you will be able to find the old Romanian household, with tools, tools, sheds, outbuildings and the rooms of the houses as they were organized by our ancestors. The wooden church could not be missing. A presentation of the cottages can be followed by clicking on the QR code displayed next to them. The museum covers an area of 10 hectares and presents 40 households and their ancestral homes.

At the opposite end of the entrance to the village museum is a playground for small children and a horse park. You can see domestic animals such as horses, sheep, ducks, geese.