Open air museums Západné Slovensko

Včelársky skanzen (also known as a museum or apiary clearing), situated in a beautiful English park in the village of Kráľová pri Senci, ranks among the largest beekeeping open-air museums in Central Europe. It is a significant collection of valuable information about the life and functioning of bees. You can even see with your own eyes an original thousand-year-old bee used in a film by Juraj Jakubiska.

This small bee kingdom, as the locals fondly call it, was founded in 1930. At that time, it originally served as a vocational school for future beekeepers. In 1932, the apiary clearing was handed over to the Regional Headquarters of Beekeeping Associations in Slovakia, and gradually, from 1961 onwards, the construction of the beekeeping open-air museum began. Its gates were opened to the public in 1975. Today, this unique beekeeping museum offers you displays of truly unique hive collections. It gathers unique materials about the development of beekeeping, how we as humanity can use it in various areas of our lives, and last but not least, about honey production.

During the tour, Včelárska paseka will also give you an answer to why a human could not survive without bees. You will learn that bees have been on Earth for more than 150 million years, and of course, the secret of their precious products. Whether it is liquid gold, as honey is popularly called, propolis, royal jelly, pollen, or last but not least, wax.

The museum features more than 300 exhibits, each of which can tell its own story. Some of the exhibited hives were even used as early as the 17th century. Located here is a large apiary building where honey extractors, comb foundation presses, and various tools and supplies of beekeepers mapping the development of beekeeping in Slovakia are exhibited.

You will leave Včelárska paseka truly enriched. With new information, experiences, inner gratitude toward the little bees and their tireless work, and last but not least, perhaps also with purchased genuine bee products. If you also want to participate in one of the events held here, we recommend booking accommodation in Senec and its surroundings so that you can also visit other attractions that the surroundings of the open-air museum and Senec offer.

Gazdovský dvor is a permanent exhibition in Turá Lúka, a borough of Myjava. It depicts the traditional way of life and housing in a typical scattered settlement homestead in the Myjava region from the end of the 19th century. A visit to the open-air museum, which consists of a sensitively restored building, will take you back in time to the period between 1900 and 1950. In the small house, you will see period folk costumes, implements, and various tools.

An interesting feature is that this is not a strictly static exhibition, but rather a "living" open-air museum. The homestead is cared for by a farmer and his wife, who treat travelers just as a proper homestead should, with herbal tea from their own garden, bread with lard, or a peasant meal cooked that very day. Almost the entire interior and exterior are authentic, donated to the exhibition by the residents of Myjava, Stará Myjava, Turá Lúka, Vrbovce, Brestovec, and other scattered settlement villages. Each donated item has its own age, story, and soul, preserving a piece of our ancestors' lives.

If you sit inside with the farmer's wife, you can try tying traditional Myjava headscarves. In the farm's yard, farm animals run around, a dog guards the domain, and a tomcat dozes on the windowsill, almost like in a fairytale. You might very well meet the master of the house while he is caring for the livestock. If you have the desire and courage, you can even lend him a hand. Next to the barn, the farmer even has work tools ready, such as sleighs, a wagon, a winnowing machine, a threshing machine, a chaff cutter, harrows, and various equipment.

Throughout the year, this unique open-air museum in Myjava allows you to experience genuine kopanice life thanks to regularly organized events. Traditional pig slaughtering, Easter whipping, barn floor threshing, a kopanice wedding, along with the opportunity to try on a traditional Myjava folk costume. During the harvest festival, a fair is prepared directly in and around Gazdovský dvor with demonstrations of traditional crafts, tastings of regional cuisine, and authentic harvest celebrations. Alongside this, you will watch demonstrations of traditional field work without the use of modern technology, and if you feel up to it, you can even sign up for a scythe-mowing competition. The Plum Day will introduce you to making plum dumplings, cooking traditional plum jam, and will even include a tasting of fruit brandy.

Are you drawn to the Myjava kopanice region? We are not surprised; it is a beautiful area that attracts more and more tourists every year who long to discover our cultural heritage and history. Book accommodation on the page accommodation Myjava and come explore the corners of our country that you may have only read about until now.

Skalné obydlia Brhlovce are an exposed branch of the Tekovské múzeum v Leviciach. They are located in the village of the same name, Brhlovce, in the Nitriansky kraj, which is a protected reserve of folk architecture. It is a unique Slovak example of a distinctive form of folk architecture, which allegedly originally served as protection against the looting raids of the Turks, and later as homes for the poor.

The exhibition, which was opened to the public in 1992, consists of homestead number 142 in the "Šurda" lane. Part of the homestead where the exhibition is located includes a brick house from the end of the 19th century, a brick house dated 1932 on the facade, and two-story spaces carved into the rock. The ground floor consists of a summer kitchen, a pantry, and a display of period stonemason products and tools. The upper floor consists of a small chamber and a viewing terrace. The impression is completed by period furniture with which the interior is furnished.

The very carving of the dwellings into the tuff is considered unique because they possess a special property. That is, they stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Utilizing this thermal advantage during the construction of the dwellings demonstrates the cleverness, resourcefulness, and skill of the settlers of that time and their overall way of life.

Thanks to the exhibition of rock dwellings, Tekovské múzeum v Leviciach became the first Slovak institution in 1994 to receive the prestigious Europa Nostra international award. A surprising fact is that some of the rock dwellings are still inhabited or used as wine cellars or utility spaces to this day.

If you want to verify this for yourself, there is only one guaranteed way. Come and see it with your own eyes. Since the entire region also offers many other interesting attractions, the best thing to do is to plan a multi-day trip. You can easily book accommodation from which all trip options will be closest on the pages accommodation Nitriansky kraj and accommodation Levice.