In Moldova, a village is banking on its picturesque hobbit houses

"We fear that the commune will disappear because there are very few people left," Mayor Ruslan Groza, a 46-year-old history professor, told AFP, explaining that the commune now has only about thirty residents compared to 200 a few decades ago.

"I want to develop this locality, build roads, renovate the houses that can still be renovated and develop tourism," he explains.

Located two hours north of Chisinau airport, the capital of the country of 2,4 million inhabitants, Rogojeni is one of the few rural towns that still has low houses, called "basti".

With their small front doors requiring one to stoop, these picturesque stone houses are semi-buried in green hills, far from asphalt roads.

Tourists started arriving in greater numbers after one of the village's houses, which was renovated in 2020, was opened to the public, explains Mr. Groza, who says he is not yet keeping an exact count of the number of visitors.

When AFP visited Rogojeni in early January, Sangkyoung Lee, a South Korean student, was among the guests who came to share the roast pig under the hay prepared for the Christmas Eve feast, celebrated on January 7 by some Orthodox countries and parishes.

Such customs are "hard to see" elsewhere, says the 22-year-old, looking amazed at the steaming pig under the snowflakes.

Inside the house, which has been transformed into a museum, a stew, polenta with sheep's cheese, marinated green tomatoes and red wine are then served around a table in a small room with blue walls decorated with brightly colored embroidered rugs.

Although Ruslan Groza says he is proud of this heritage, he admits that most of the buildings are left abandoned, such as the old school and a church, of which only the exterior walls remain.

"Cool in summer, warm in winter"

While tens of thousands of Moldovans choose to emigrate each year in search of a better life, the depopulation of the countryside is a slow poison, pushing villages to merge.

Since 2014, they have lost nearly half a million inhabitants, according to a 2024 census, and for Mariana Groza, the mayor's wife, only "tradition can reverse this trend".

A literature and French teacher, the 45-year-old woman has launched an embroidery and costume workshop, which she advertises on TikTok.

"Not a day goes by without me doing cross stitch or crochet: if I don't, I feel like my day has been wasted," she says.

Along with other women, including two in their eighties, she sings traditional songs in front of the museum, ringing a bell while a man plays the accordion.

To the tune of one of the most catchy songs, the two grandmothers begin to dance with infectious joy.

"When I got married here, there were lots of people, there were children, the village was beautiful," recalls one of them, Maria Ardeleanu.

"Now there is nobody left. Just us, a handful of old women," she laments, adding that she enjoys talking to tourists who want to know what life is like in a "basca".

"I tell them that in summer it's cool, that it's pleasant inside. And that in winter it's nice and warm and I don't go out much," she explains, praising the natural insulation of traditional housing.

When the songs end and the singers throw grains of wheat towards the listeners as a token of prosperity, her dance partner starts counting how many she has caught.

"Eight," she calculates cheerfully. "Tradition says that's the number of years I have left to live."