Sándor’s Walnut Trees

Old walnut trees in Felszeg remind us of him. According to local folklore, the parents moved to the plot where the trees still stand after their house burned down. These walnut trees are said to be the ones to have seen the little boy Sándor playing under them.

Three kilometres south-west of the spa town of Covasna, on the banks of the Chiuruș stream - the prefix of its name was given in 1898 in honour of the memory of its great native, Sándor Kőrösi Csoma - there are, of course, more direct reminders of the Great Wanderer. A statue of the Asia researcher and linguist, born in 1784, has been standing in the centre of the village since 1972, and a renovated Csoma memorial exhibition can be visited in one of the rooms of the former village hall. On the site of the burnt-down birthplace, the public cultural association that bears his name has built a replica of the imaginary Csoma House, where a memorial room and a contemporary Szekler room interior can be seen. On the wall is a plaque: "From here the orphan son of a nation departed, the immortality of a great nation's wanderer returned." In the courtyard, carved headstones commemorate the Csoma researchers and travellers.

In Covasna, the Kőrösi Csoma Sándor Centre, designed by Lőrincz Csernyus, is nearing completion, which also seeks to emphasise the great Hungarian hereditary researcher's immediacy through elements of organic architecture.