At the foot of the Almaj Mountains, in the western
\nRomanian region of Banat, in a small place called Rudaria, now known as
\nEftimie Murgu, people still preserve old customs alive, not for religious or
\nmystical purposes, but to provide their meal: they grind cereals at some
\ncenturies-old water mills. <\/p>\n
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The ensemble of mills in the Rudaria Gorges is the
\nlargest complex of its kind in south-eastern Europe, being powered by the
\nRudarica rivulet, a tributary of the Nera river. The old name of the locality,
\nRudaria, is derived from the Slav words ruda (ore) and reka (river). The
\nwords also make you think of the stones the mills were made of, being powered
\nby river-water. <\/p>\n
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Documented in the 18th century,
\napparently, those hydraulic systems were introduced in the area as early as the
\n2nd-3rd centuries, by the Cistercian monks. Even if
\nsome of those mills have been restored, and others completely rebuilt after the
\ninitial architectural plans, they continue to provide maize and wheat flour to
\nthe locals. The villagers say that once, a mill functioned uninterruptedly for
\n24 hours to grind wheat and produced no less than 130 kilograms of flour. <\/p>\n
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Mihai Otiman, public administrator at the Eftimie
\nMurgu town hall, tells us more about the past and the present of the mills in
\nthe Rudaria Gorges. <\/p>\n
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The first mills date back to 1772. Some of them were
\nreduced to rubble, and only 22 of them are still standing and functioning after
\nrepeated flooding. Last year, for instance, we had a problem, when a powerful
\nflash flood destroyed two other mills in the month of September, but we managed
\nto reconstruct them, with support from the National Investment Company. We’ve
\nalso reconstructed four dams, we have one more to rebuild and everything will
\ngo back to normal. Unfortunately, last year we were hit by floods and this year
\nwe are facing drought. The river has
\ndried up and it should rain a lot for the storage lakes to be filled with water
\nagain. Silt should also accumulate to raise the water-level, so that the mills
\nmay become operational again. <\/p>\n
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Hidden under the hard rock slope, where a modern road
\nwas built, the mills are well protected, standing on the riverbank. But,
\nbecause the rivulet does not have a high flow, people built small dams to
\nassure the necessary water flow for the mills to function properly. The mills
\nbear names, either that of the builder, of the place they are located on or of
\nthe family who takes care of the mill, at the request of the other co-owners:
\nthe Tunnel Mill, the Trailoanea Mill, the Firiz Mill, the Rosoanea Mill, the
\nMill between the Rivers, the Prundulea Mill, the Popeasca Mill, the Maxinoanea
\nMill, the Hambaroanea etc. Mihai Otiman explains how this type of mill
\nco-ownership has functioned in the area.
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The mills belong to the villagers, in a collective
\nownership system. Each mill has around 30 owners who are in charge of the repair
\nworks and maintenance. They each take turns grinding, on days that they decide
\namong themselves. On that day, the villager comes and takes care of the
\ngrinding, and at the end turns the key to the manager, who passes it on to the
\nnext miller. They grind maize into flour for porridge, as well as various grain
\nmixes for feeding animals. We also grind flour for whole-wheat bread. What we
\nhave here is not a museum, the mills are operational and they are actually in
\nuse.<\/p>\n
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The mills in Rudarie Gorges have been built in
\nkeeping with the principles of the vernacular traditional architecture,
\nrestored in the early 2000s under the supervision of the experts from the Astra
\nEthnographic Museum in Sibiu. The funding was provided under EUROART, the EU
\nfund earmarked to Romania for cultural projects. To this day, all repair works
\nhave to be done in keeping with the same traditional methods. Mihai Otiman
\nagain:<\/p>\n
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The mills are built entirely of weed. Obviously,
\nover the years some specific traditional elements had to be replaced. In the
\npast, even the water wheels were made of wood, but since there are no longer
\nany craftsmen who know how to make those wooden blades, we switched to metal
\nwheels. But everything else is made of wood, and it all fits nicely into the
\narchitecture of the area. The roof itself is made of wood shingles, sheet metal
\nor other materials are not permitted.<\/p>\n
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Today, the mill complex in Rudarie Gorges is on the
\nlist of Historical Monuments in Romania, and hundreds of tourists come to see
\nit every year.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The ensemble of mills in the Rudaria Gorges is the largest complex of its kind in south-eastern Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":168002,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45210],"tags":[45260,43286],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-168001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rri-encyclopaedia","tag-cheile-rudariei","tag-mills"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n