Statue of Stephen the Great and Saint (Ștefan cel Mare și Sfânt)

In the middle of the paved square at the centre of the commune stands Ștefan cel Mare, Stephen the Great, on a white plinth belted top and bottom with the same band of red and black motifs the village houses carry. The plinth reads „Ștefan cel Mare și Sfânt 1457-1504”, the years of his reign, not of the statue.

The prince is shown standing, crowned, a sword in one hand and the model of a church in the other. Who made it, and in what year it went up, is not known: neither the town hall nor the open archives give a name and a date, so both are left unwritten here.

The square in the centre

The statue is the landmark every visit to Ciocănești starts from. On the same square stand wooden pavilions with shingle roofs, the large letters spelling out the name of the commune, the flags and two wooden carts carrying giant painted eggs. The central square is the stage for the village feasts.

The band on the plinth is the same one the houses carry: red and black rhombs, top and bottom, raised in plaster and then painted. Anyone who comes to Ciocănești for the façades can start here, with the mark moved off a wall and onto a monument.

Why Stephen, here

Local tradition ties the name of the village to the ciocănari, hammer men said to have forged weapons for the princes of Moldavia. The documents explain it differently, through the Ciocan family, who appear on 31 July 1775 in a dispute over the Botușul Mic mountain. The legend has stayed alive all the same, and the statue is how the village keeps it in plain sight.

The same memory runs through the local dedications: one of the commune's monasteries carries the name „Sfântul Ștefan cel Mare și Sfânt” and stands less than a kilometre off the DN18.

What is around it

A few steps away are the National Museum of Painted Eggs, in the „Florin Gheucă” culture hall, and the ethnographic museum across the road from it. The town hall is less than a hundred metres away on Strada Principală, and the DN18 runs right past the square.

The eight restored old houses start from here too: the head of the circuit lies about a hundred metres from the plinth, and the houses spread out along the valley towards both ends of the commune.