Open-air museum
Open-air museum presents cultural values of ethnically mixed region in northern Spisz and north-western Saris. With it´s character presents unique variousness of life in this area.
1. The Greek-Catholic church from Matysová
The dominant of the exposition is the wooden Greek Catholic church sacrified to Saint Michael Archangel, built in 1833. It belongs to the outstanding remembrances of the folk sacral architecture in the eastern Slovakia.
It is rustic one-nave building with the sanctuary having a polygonal closure and an antechapel, above which the high tower is perking. The church interior is decorated with the iconostas, created in the Baroque- Classic style decorating three-row architecture from the first half of the XVIIIth century. The side altar of the Transfiguration from the second half of the XVIIth century to the beginning of the XVIIIth century is on the left from the iconostas. The origine of the circular object hanging up on the ceiling in the middle of the nave is connected to the legend from the middle of the XVIIth century which had been preserved in the village. The church was transported to the exposition in 1979 and in 1991 it was reordained. Some lithurgies in the Old Slavonic language are held there on some special religious holidays.
2. The Dwelling House from Veľký Lipník from 1922
As to the architecture and typology it is a regular three-place house with three basic rooms: bedroom – porch- store-room. This type of the ground–plan existed in the Slovak and Ruthenian villages in the neighbourhood of Stará Ľubovňa.
In the traditional room there used to be as a rule a chimney-nook, a corner with the table, bed, setees/benches etc. The corner with the table, where the walls were decorated with the religious paintings of the saints, was called saints´ corner. The simple folk furniture used to have poly-functional use. In this little house three weddings and four funerals were held. But it had never housed a new-born child. The house had been inhabited by a couple without any children by the end. The husband used to devote himself to the tinkery besides farming and he often spent much time on journeys in Hungary.
3. The Seasonal Field Dwellings from Litmanová
They were built in the village neighbourhood about 10 km from the village. Their last owner was Vasiľ Hlinka. They became the objects of inheritage of two generations. The buildings both with meadow, soil and the woods created one landed estate called „majdán“.The dwelling two-room building was called „chiška“ as a small bedroom, the farm out-building was called „staňa“ something like a stable. These buildings served to live to the families all the summer long and they went there also with their cattle. The purpose of this farming was to provide enough breed for cattle for all the summer and also for winter. While doing the summer seasonal field jobs it used to be really very gaily. The singing from the fireplace used to sound in the nearby mountains not only in the days, but also late in the evenings.
4. The Granary from Veľká Lesná.
It was built in the late XIXth century. It has an original frame-house construction, shaped in the form of the truncated cone on the top. The construction of the saddleback roof is free laid on the vault which could be fast thrown down in the case of the fire. The granaries of that type occured in the eastern part of this region. From the outside they were clayed by the thick layer of the earth and consequently whitened. They were placed in the courtyard or out of the courtyard, usually in front of the house. They often created the terraced built-up area along the river. Interior space has two floors. The grain was stored in the plate conveyors and pig moulds .Usually there were also some clothes chests, weaving looms etc. The granary doors were usually protected with solid locks.
5. The Farmer´s House and the Village´s Reeve´s house from Veľká Lesná.
It is a Goral house from Spiš Zamagurie. It was built by Štefan Čensčák in 1909. Originally it had a large gate in the face of the building, so-called „pšejozd“ by which they entered the closed courtyard . The face of the buiding has been created by the lengthwise side oriented to the south. It has regular ground-plan with the room placed in the middle of the house. The front-room was not originaly heated, but after having built the stove after the WWII it has been changed into the kitchen. The house owner had 6 ha of soil, a pair of horses and he earned some money by horse-pulled lifting. He took the local inhabitants to the nearest railway station in Podolinec. He was a local reeve for several years. Two generations lived in this house, they enjoyed their eight children´s birth and there were 5 weddings in the house.
6. The Shepherd´s House from Litmanová
A two-place cottage of the village´s shepherd from 1921, whose owner was Adam Šepták from the nearby Polish town of Muszyna. Originally it was built at the end of the village and the local inhabitants called it“ pastirňa“, i.e. the shepherd´s house.
The main dwelling place in the house used to be the room with a very simple furniture. The parents´ bed served to sleep, the child´s cradle was hanging on the ceiling. The other members of the family had to sleep on the benches and on the chimney in the front-room. There was placed also a stove to bake bread. It presents the oldest type of the baker´s stove which has been preserved in Upper Spiš. They cooked on the open fire in front of the mouth of the stove. The smoke was lead out by the smoke boxes to the loft. The exhibits to equipe the cottage.interior were collected in Litmanová.
7. The Peasants´ Homestead from Údol
This homestead was built by the pawn Mikuláš Soroka in the twenties of the XXth century. There is a dwelling house, stable, barn and a granary.
The three-place house with the side placed store-room is typical for the Carpathian region and its occurrence goes beyond the Stará Ľubovňa surrounding.The basic places in the house are the room, porch and the store-room. The room´s interior is adjusted for the life of an extended family, i.e. the parents and the married son´s family. There is also a very interesting heating place built on the internal sides of the room and the porch. It represents the combination of the stove and breadbaking oven having the mouth with the open fire and stove in the porch. The room interior is introducing the scene of the Christmas holiday celebrated in the close family. The homestad´s owner possessing 9 ha of the farmland, was considered by the village inhabitants to be a rich husbandman. Besides his farming he devoted himself to manufacturing of the cooper products such as wooden water jars, milk pots, butter churns, barrels etc. It was the house where one child had been born and three weddings had been given.
8. The Family House from Údol
The house was built by the couple Murcek. As to the architecture and ground-planning it represents the last development stage of the cottage building in this region. There was a place for only one family and they kept a room, kitchen, porch and a store-room at their disposal. There is also an exposition of the public so-called „folk“ school to be seen. It comes from the period of the 1st Czechoslovak republic and it is connected with the teacher´s flat. The teachers used to come from Bohemia and various parts of Slovakia because of their placement. The compulsory school was for children between 6 and 12 years of age. In the past the school was only hardly ever full. Children had to help at home doing the farmers´ works or to graze cattle. They went to school mostly in the wintertime.
9.The Carpenter´s Workshop
Built as a copy of the original from 1928.
The original workshop´s owner was a carpenter- naturalist. He manufactured windows, doors, beds, backed settees, kitchen shelves and farmers´ tools. In the past it used to be a very hard work, demanding especially the hard manual wood-working. In the interior there are exposed main working tools of the village carpenter.
10. The House from Jarabina
The owner of the house from 1930 was Vasiľ Jaseník with his wife maiden-named Vislocká.
As to the typology it represents the three-place house with a room, porch and store-room. The last one is not built on the groundplan axis of the room and porch.There is a gallery called „gánok“ with the wooden decking which goes along the front facade and the lateral side up to the enter of the house on the level of the first beam binding of the frame-house. It is situated
on the high stone substaining wall.It is all basement-built. This type of the folk-architecture has been influenced by the Polish architecture.In the interior is an exposition devoted to the tinkery. The village of Jarabina is well-known as the tinkers´ village in Spiš. In the Stará Ľubovňa surrounding there were some more tinkers´ villages such as Litmanová, Kamienka, Stráňany and Veľký Lipník. In the XIXth century almost all men without any exception, both younger and older ones, left the area to earn some money in Rumania,Hungary, Yougoslavia and Subcarpathian Russia. In this exposition you can see all kinds of the tinkers´ works in Spiš.
11. The Living House from Jakubany
It was possession of the family Krivoňák, who built it in 1938. It consists of two places, a room and a porch. In the porch they cooked on the open fire placed behind the mouth into the breadbaking oven. The stove in the room served to cook and to heat as well.
The room´s interior presents the important scene in the family life, the child´s birth. The mother with the new-born child is lying on the bed, covered with a sheet. The red decoration of the sheet with the needles stuck in it should have protected the child and its mother from evil. The child was bathed in the wooden bathtub. The midwives added holy water into the first bath to protect the child from the evil influences. The water from the first bath was poured out to the tree. The bathed child was buttered, then swaddled into the cloth diaper and pillow. There are many superstitions and customs connected with a child´s birth which were supposed to provide his happy growing up, happiness and wealth for the child.
12. The Rooms´ Ceiling Billets
The middle baulks were decorated by curved ornaments and inscriptions. According to the roof´s size there were usually three or five of them. The central decorated beam was usually called „tragar, meštegrenda or sosromb“ in our area. There were preserved some fragments from the old ornaments on them, the solar motives, rosettes and inscriptions with the fundator´s name and the year of the house construction. The inscriptions are in the dialects, e.g. Šariš, Goral, German and Ruthanian ones. For instance the beam inscription in the house of Andrej Kozák from Chmelnica:“ Founded by Andrej Kozák with his wife Maria in 1922, everything depends on God“. The authors of these inscriptions were the carpenters . These inscriptions were supposed to have a magic power. The baptised child, the woman heavily giving birth or the hard-suffering dying person were put below them. The fiancés used to be blessed there before the wedding. The bride was taken her wreath off her head and decorated with the bonnet. She danced her first dance with her husband below this beam.
13.The Living House from Kremná
The house´s owner Mikuláš Cicák built it in the twenties of the XXth century. The solid tree trunks, which had been lengthwise halved, were used to its construction. It was built by the Polish carpenters. It is a three-room house. There was preserved an old fireplace consisting of a breadbaking oven, an open fireplace and a stove. The smoke was getting out of the porch directly to the .open house-top. The house interior is introducing a significant scene from the family life, the wedding in the past connected with the number of customs and traditions. The wedding was preceded by courting and asking parents for the bride, and then by three marriage banns read in the church. After all these doings the day of wedding came. Traditionally it was given in the beginning of the week, on Monday morning. The wedding took 3 days, it started on Sunday evening when the young couple gave away to all their friends. On Monday it went on with the wedding service and on Tuesday they had to transport all the bride´s hope chest to the mother-in-law´s house. The wedding feasts used to be modest, but cheerful and full of singing.
14. The Farmhouse from Kamienka
The owner of the farmhouse from the thirties of the XXth century was Anton Kurcin. As to its typology it is a one-wing building which under one roof houses the dwelling part both with the farm out-building without any mutual interconnections. The dwelling part consists of the room and the porch. The farm out-building consists of a stable, undershed and a barn. It was built by the local carpenters. The owner of the farmhouse did not possess any farmlands. The only source for his family with three children to live on was the wide-spread tinkering and studbulls breeding.
The interior introduces the saddest and most difficult moment in the family life, the decease. At the moment of decease all clocks in the house were stopped by the home people, they veiled the mirror over and put a coin into the dead person´s hand. The woman in the coffin was put on some parts of her wedding clothes These clothes of innocence had to save her soul from the fire in Purgatory. Many pagan elements had been preserved in the traditions connected with the death.
15. Smith´s Hearth
The smith´s hearth comes from the village of Torysa. Its owner Bartolomej Sekerák built it in the second half of the XIXth century. It is a wooden frame building with one room in front of the entrance. In its inner set-out was also the hearth where the smith heated a piece of iron and shaped it on the hammer anvil with his hammers as he needed. The smith manufactured the farmer´s tools, ironworks for the wooden tools, shoed horses and cattle The roofed place in front of the hearth´s entrance served the purpose of shoeing horses and cattle. The last forging smith in this hearth was Marcel Sekerák.
16. The Mill from Sulín
The flour-mill consists of a mill-race and the dwelling part for the miller´s family. The mill-race is a wooden construction with the basement and two other floors. In the basement are the conversion device and the driving one providing the whole mill running. On the ground-floor is placed the technical device, i.e. the cylindral stool and the barley peeling machine. In the middle of the floor was installed the grain skip loader from which the grain was pulled by the lift through the wooden tubes up to the basket . From this basket it fell down on the cylinders. The grain was being grinded several times and then it was sieved in the sifting boxes placed in the attic or on the groundfloor to get the flour and scrap. The mill was working all the year long. At the harvest time they had a short break to do the essential small maintenance of the technical device in the mill. The mill did grinding for all surrounding villages. The last owner was František Pavliak who in the thirties of the XXth century reconstructed the mill from the originally stone mill to the cylindral one.