The First Romanian School Museum (Muzeul Prima Școală Românească) is located inside the courtyard of the Saint Nicholas Church in the historic Schei district of Brașov. The former school building is now a historic monument and a museum.
The school was first built out of wood in 1495 when Brașov was part of the Kingdom of Hungary. It became the first school in the current territory of Romania to teach classes in the Romanian language from around 1530. It is also the place where the first books in Romanian were printed by deacon Coresi. Between 1595 and 1597 the school was rebuilt from stone and in 1760 another floor was added in the Baroque style.
For a long time, the school was the only Romanian school in Transylvania and therefore students traveled from afar to attend classes here. Many villages could only afford to pay for one student who, upon returning, shared what they had learned at the school. At the most, there were 110 students at the same time and over time a total of 1,730 student have attended the school, until it was closed and the Andrei Șaguna College was opened in 1850.
The school is now a museum where you can see the old classroom, but also a large collection of historic books, manuscripts, and ethnographic objects. The collection includes a variety of Slavic and Romanian books, the first Romanian translation of the bible and the first version of what can be described as a school magazine. You can also see the first Romanian printing press, which nonsurprisingly only produced 39 books, given the amount of manual labour involved in the process.
