Regional Ethnographic Open-Air Museum “Etar”
Etar Museum – a living picture of a bygone era!
When you step inside the only open-air ethnographic museum in Bulgaria, you enter a world different from the modern one – the world of the Bulgarian Renaissance. Here the water turns the wheel of a centuries-old mill, and the cobblestones underfoot remind you that the true beauty in life is hidden in the experience of the emotion of touching the craftsmanship of our ancestors.
Bulgaria’s only collection of working water structures is located in the Etar Museum.
Etar is the ancient name of the Yantra River, which runs through the town of Gabrovo. It was chosen as the name of the museum as a symbol of the connection between water and the development of crafts in the region. The Regional Ethnographic Open-Air Museum “Etar” has the only collection of technical equipment powered by water in Bulgaria. The collection has been gradually built up and includes equipment still in use today that was once used in the livelihood of the Balkars: two mills, a rolling mill, two rolling mills, a bullfighting mill, a gaitanjis odaya, two lathes for gavanki and for barrels, a rolling mill. Thanks to a wadis system that existed in the past, later corrected and shaped, water powered mechanisms that washed, sharpened knives, ground wheat, wove woolen cloth, turned wooden vessels, and wove woolen threads.
The craftsmen’s marketplace is still bustling with life today as it was during the Renaissance.
The architectural ensemble of the Craftsmen’s Charshchia presents a main town street with 19th century buildings housing active craftsmen’s workshops, workshops, a café and the homes of craftsmen and merchants. The ensemble of houses includes recreations of original architectural examples that existed in Gabrovo and its surroundings. The Sako House impresses with its numerous windows on the second floor, as such buildings of the Bulgarian Revival period are not often found. In the workshops, before the eyes of visitors, the craftsmen themselves produce and sell their wares, as in the past, and visitors can observe old techniques of working metal, leather, wood, clay, wool, goatskin and other natural raw materials. They can see original craft tools, enjoy the skills of the craftsmen and take home their wares. At the Charshiya one can taste simid, banitsa and gevrek, try pestil, white jam, halva, homemade sweets and other treats, or drink coffee brewed on sand.
Over the years, the Etar Museum has established itself as the only outdoor museum of its kind of the Skansen type in Bulgaria.
