An Outdoor Showcase of Timbered Homes

By Awake! writer in Slovakia

IN SOME lands the history and beauty of the homes of past times have been lovingly preserved in open-air museums. Such museums are outdoor collections of traditional buildings brought together in one place to acquaint the modern generation with the way of life and artistic tastes of their forebears.

Let’s visit an excellent example of an open-air museum, located in the heart of Europe in the Orava region of northern Slovakia.

The Museum of the Orava Village

The Orava open-air museum in Zuberec provides a life-size, three-dimensional snapshot of this region’s history. Founded in 1967, the museum includes houses from 74 nearby villages and farmsteads as well as from remote, lonely settlements. All of these buildings were brought to the site in pieces and carefully reassembled.

Here we can tour 11 complete estates, representing the homes of both the prominent and the common folk of Orava​—mayors, noblemen, farmers, farmhands, and craftsmen. Since for centuries agriculture, along with the breeding of cattle and sheep, was the principal occupation of Orava residents, farm structures are well represented. These include haylofts, a threshing floor, dairy barns, and a shepherd’s hut and sheepfold as well as granaries and storage buildings made of logs. We also find a beehive, traditional handmade tools, a bell tower, and a wooden church, complete with an imitation cemetery!

As we look inside the homes, we note that a typical Orava house consisted of four rooms​—a front room, an entrance hall, a kitchen, and a closet or back room. It may also have had a low basement paved with flat stones. The houses were constructed with carved timbers, often highlighted in white around the windows and doors. Roofs and their richly crafted gables were covered with shingles or planks. At times the living room had an earthen floor, but even then the walls may have been whitewashed or perhaps covered with smoothly finished natural wood paneling. Cooking was done over an open fire in the kitchen, the smoke escaping through a chimney. The warmth of the kitchen radiated into the living room.

Working and Playing Together

The design of these wooden structures provides physical evidence of strong intergenerational and community ties. Homes and villages were organized for cooperative effort. Indeed, survival under the harsh conditions of this mountainous region would have been practically impossible had people not cooperated closely. Families and neighbors worked together to drive cows, sheep, and geese to pasture, and the whole village united to scythe the fields and to take their farm products to market. The community also maintained pastures and dirt roads.

Despite the hard work, village life was generally happy, especially at harvesttime. Good milk production and the birth of calves and lambs brought rejoicing. On such occasions the hills rang with song and folk melodies​—sung in harmony and accompanied by  pipe, harmonica, or accordion. In winter, girls and married women got together to pluck goose feathers for pillows and comforters. Men passed the time relating stories while they worked, and at the end of the day, everyone came together to dance. In some places in this region, such traditions continue down to this day.

A Glance Into the Past

The skilled artisans who built these fine old wooden structures based their designs on construction principles and floor plans passed from generation to generation. The designs made effective use of local materials. Additionally, practical wisdom and aesthetic sense are evident in the pleasing way the buildings fit into their surroundings. The builders obviously put their hearts as well as their minds into their work.

The world-renowned architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe noted: “To every ax cut belongs meaning and to every chisel stroke an expression. . . . The expertise of whole generations is stored up here. What a sense of material and what intensity of expression are in these buildings! How gratifying and charming they are! They seem to be an echo of ancient songs!”

As we pause to admire the architecture in the open-air museum, we also try to imagine the people who lived in these buildings as they carried out their daily activities. Hopefully, we can bring some of the tranquillity of this slower-paced life with us into our hectic modern world.

[Map on page 14]

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Zuberec

[Pictures on page 15]

(1) Timbered homes; (2) inside view; (3) residents playing music and dancing in their traditional costumes