Fast-shrinking village

REVIVAL: HAMLET OUT OF 'THE HOBBIT' BANKING ON HISTORIC TRADITIONS >>> Dugout houses have put settlement on the tourist map.

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HOPEFUL. Maria Ardeleanu, 86, with her friend outside a basca museum-house in Rogojeni village. With a handful of dugout houses, the hamlet in northern Moldova hopes to draw more visitors.

(AFP)

They call Rogojeni the “hobbit village” and its little half-buried houses, built to resist Moldova’s cold winters and hot summers, do look like something from The Lord of the Rings.

The traditional dugout houses have put the shrinking settlement on the tourist map and locals hope they may also help to save it.

“We do fear that the village could disappear, considering that there are so few people left,” said mayor Ruslan Groza, with only 30 people left in a hamlet that once had a population of 200.

“My goal is to develop this locality, build roads, repair where possible the houses that can be preserved and develop tourism,” he said.

Rogojeni is one of the last villages that still boasts the low stone basca houses built into grassy hills, with their small doors forcing people to stoop down when they enter.