11 / 12
Stop 11Room 17: The kitchen
Rooms 17–19 – Kitchen, storeroom and mint
These three rooms show the practical side of life in the citadel. A garrison of about 300 men had to be fed every day, and in a siege the supplies had to last for weeks.
- Period
- 15th–17th century
- Material
- Original ethnographic objects; reconstructed period stove
- Where it is
- Room 17: The kitchen, the fort
Read the textHide the text
Narration text
These three rooms show the practical side of life in the citadel. A garrison of about 300 men had to be fed every day, and in a siege the supplies had to last for weeks. The kitchen is reconstructed with original ethnographic objects and an ordinary stove of the period, made by the restoration laboratory of the History and Archaeology Museum in Piatra-Neamț.
Next door, the storeroom reminds us that a fortress's resistance depended as much on grain, smoked meat and water as on walls and cannon. Then comes the mint. Throughout the Middle Ages the citadel played an important role in protecting the trade routes that followed the valleys of the Moldova and Neamț rivers.
The town of Neamț, first documented on 8 October 1408, had customs posts, fairs and craftsmen, and trade required a substantial circulation of coins. The reconstruction shows how such a workshop might have looked.