DESCRIPTION
Chișinău- Dolna: 53 km Five surrounding villages belonged to the boyar and the house of Dolna was a vacation house. Zamfirache Ralli had a large family, five boys and three girls who lived in Chișinău and were spending their holidays in Dolna, at this mansion. During summer, different parties with musicians and gypsies were organized. Pușkin, the Russian writer, who was exiled in Bessarabia for his work about politics, has visited this place in July-August 1821. Since 1964, the house becomes a subsidiary of the museum house of A.S. Pușin, from Chișinău. In the '80s, the house was having over 150 thousand tourists per year. After the collapse of the USSR, the place was forgotten and then, in 2002, it was restored. Exhibits were gathered during a long time, these representing original works from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the park, in front of the mansion, a monument to Pușkin is installed, made by the Russian sculptor Oleg Comov (1972). Each year, on the birthday of the poet, the Pușkiniana is conducted (celebration of poetry). In the woods, next to the village, is located the Zamfirei meadow, the place where Pushkin lived for a while (in a gypsy camp), which inspired him to write the poem “Gypsies”. After the first World War, the mansion passed into the village’s property. First there was a library, a music school and then, only in the 70s, the today’s museum was opened, with minor modifications, as they changed the doors and windows and rebuilt the roof and porch. Now it operates as a subsidiary of Pușkin museum in Chișinău. Apparently, the Ralli-Arbore family had a much richer history than just the period of accommodating the Russian poet. The museum has two levels, 15 of the rooms being open to the public. They are decorated with furniture of the nineteenth century brought from various museums of the former USSR. The exhibits are not the personal belongings of the family, only a few letters on display are belonging to the Ralli family.
