Orawa Ethnographic Park

Orawa is a small borderland region under Babia Gora, split between Poland and Slovakia in 1920, with a building tradition of its own, and the museum at Zubrzyca Gorna was founded in 1955 around the Moniak manor - a large seventeenth-century wooden nobleman's house that stands on its original site, which is unusual for a skansen. Around it have been brought some thirty buildings: cottages, a forge, a sawmill, a water-driven fulling mill for cloth, an oil press, apiaries. The church of St Michael, built in 1651, was moved here from Tokarnia and re-erected with its painted interior, the walls and ceiling covered in folk polychrome. The site runs on a hillside with the mountain behind it, so it works as a walk as well as a museum, and the collections cover a culture that in Poland exists only in a handful of villages.

What you actually see

• The Moniak manor - a seventeenth-century wooden noble house on its own site.
• A church of 1651 - moved here and re-erected with its painted interior.
• Working mills - a fulling mill, sawmill, forge and oil press.
• Babia Gora behind - the museum laid out on the hillside under the mountain.

When to go

May to September. Half a day.

Honest expectations

Open seasonally, with reduced or no winter opening. Interiors of some buildings open only with a guide. The site is on a slope and involves a fair walk. Labelling is largely Polish.

Nearby

Babia Gora National Park is above; Zawoja is east.