Cultural Manifestations Organised by the Astra Museum For the Campaign "Europe, a Unique Patrimony"


The Rudaria Project


  • Name of the project: Conservation in situ of the Rudaria Complex of mills with horizontal wheels.
  • Locality: Eftimie Murgu, Caras-Severin County.
  • Composition of the complex: 22 mills with a single installation each, mills which are the property of local family groups.
  • Disposal: on Rudaria Valley, 9 out of the village and 13 into the village.
  • Aim of the project: conservation in situ of the complex, maintaining its function.






The complex has a remarkable ethnological, anthropological, historical and architectural value, every mill being a monument of folk civilisation. The locality Rudaria (today locality Eftimie Murgu) is situated in the centre of the Alma depression, at the contact point between the plain and the mountains of low altitude, which surrounds the depression. The mills are situated on a single waterway (Rudari Valley) with a permanent hydropower value, but with an important oscillation of its level, sometimes with a destructive character. The mills' buildings are made from wood, covered with shingles and the installations have the same technical, constructive and working principle. Though the mills survived in a big number, they were not exempted from modifications: o substitution of the wooden wheels by metallic ones (only two mills kept their wooden wheels); o substitution of the wooden pipes by metallic ones (again only two exceptions); o the roof made from shingles of a mill was substituted with one made from tiles; o the use of cement instead of stone for strengthening some resistance structures.


Necessary Measures:
Rudaria Project includes a series of activities for the complex's conservation and capitalisation:
  • research-documentation;
  • reparation of the buildings (walls and roofs), of the water-supply systems and of the grinding installations;
  • treatments and restoration;
  • touristic capitalisation.


Custodian Remus Iancu
E-mail: astra@sbx.logicnet.ro
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