A UNESCO World Heritage site, the Merry Cemetery of Sapanta has been declared the first funerary monument in Europe and the second in the world after the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. The cemetery represents the lifetime work of the naïve painter and poet the wood carver Ion Stan Patras. The unique character of this cemetery is given by the crosses sculpted in oak wood vividly painted and engraved with rhymed epitaphs briefly describing the life of the deceased. The dominant color of the crosses is blue, called "Sapanta blue". With its eight hundred monuments of folk art the cemetery of Sapanta represents an open air museum. The epitaphs on the crosses constitute a true chronicle of people's life, often with an ironic note, in an anecdotic tone reason for which it was called the Merry Cemetery. Here it is an example of the humoresque note of the epitaphs.
"Here lies my mother-in-law.
Had she lived another year,
It was I who had lied here. "