The village Beclean is located at the both sides on the national road 1, 3 km distant from Fagaras, in the heart of Tara Oltului. It is part of the commune with the same name, which includes other three villages: Boholt, Calbor and Hurezu. The geographic location, the culture, the vicinities and the opportunities the settlement offers make of it a constant attraction. The construction of a waste treatment dump is a guarantee of the preoccupation to protect the environment.
Tax-free Oppidum
The village is mentioned for the first time in a document from 17 May 1473, issued in Bucharest by the prince Radu the Handsome under the name ?Satlani?. Beclean continues to appear in the most of the censuses made by the Magyar authorities along the 16th-19th centuries.
The village was given the status of ?oppidum? in the 17th century, profiting exonerations from taxations, allowances confirmed by the statuses of Tara Fagarasului since the 16th century.
Matchmaking Ceremony
There is an ancient range that orders the customs and traditions in Beclean: the ice cross, the youths gathering and the wedding ceremony, unique in its kind in Tara Fagarasului.
?The matchmaking, as Ligia Fulga, director of the Ethnographic Museum Brasov stated, is the first step of the wedding sequences, with men only as performers: the future groom, his father, the godfather, the groom?s brothers and uncles. The girl?s dowry was decided in occasion of the same arrangement. The announcers got trough the whole village to invite people at the wedding. Various gastronomic ingredients were collected the Saturday before ? a flitch or a ham, a piece of bacon, cabbage, eggs ? from which skilled women cooked the wedding meals.
At the groom?s riders gather in procession to take the groom and his flag. They stop next at the godfather?s, to finish their riding at the bride?s.
Two Days Wedding
In the courtyard, the wedding guests attend another sequence of the ceremonial: the bride?s father gives a jumble to one the suitors as a consent for him to take his daughter to the altar. A wagon carries the girl?s dowry. The bride joins the wedding procession, headed to the church. At the groom?s again, a suitor utters another wedding oration, asking for a jumble too. He receives one, with a piece of bacon hanged on it. He throws the jumble over the house. The wedding pair and the sponsors go down the wagon; at the entrance, the groom?s mother turns the bride round three times, before she passes under a plate with cheese and enters the house. It follows a two days party.
The mayor of Beclean, Ioan Maican, feels honoured to lead a community with so profound roots in the culture?s soil.
