Tichilești, Tulcea 2.18

Tichileşti is a leper colony in Isaccea, Tulcea County, Romania, having 19 inhabitants in 2011. Although officially a hospital, Tichileşti appears to be more like a small village, and is formally administered as a village by Isaccea. Tichileşti was founded as a monastery, in 1875 becoming a leper colony.NameTichilești's name is derived from the Turkish name of the settlement, Tekeli is derived from the Turkish word teke, meaning "he-goat".HistoryTichileşti was founded as a monastery, in 1875 becoming a leper colony. A legend says the monastery was founded by one of the Cantacuzino princesses who was affected by leprosy. Another theory of the history the settlement is that a group of Russian refugees (see Lipovans) settled there and founded the monastery, but soon became outlaws who were eventually caught.In 1918, for unknown reasons, a part of the lepers moved to Largeanca, near the Bessarabian town of Ismail, while the rest of them being allegedly killed and their bodies being burned or thrown in a lime pit.Following a 1926 newspaper article by F. Brunea-Fox, a journalist who lived with the lepers for three weeks, a hospital was built in 1928 at the monastery. The houses and the central courtyard were built in the 1930s.In July 1932, a group of 25 starving lepers from Tichileşti threatened to march to Bucharest and entered the town of Isaccea demanding food. Local grocers and farmers had stopped supplying them food because the government had not been providing funding. The Isacceans barred their houses until the military escorted the lepers back to their colony.