The Sanok Open-Air Museum

The museum, founded in 1958 by Aleksander Rybicki, spreads over about forty hectares of hillside above the San and holds some two hundred buildings, one of the biggest collections of its kind in the country. Buildings were taken down in their villages and rebuilt here, grouped by the peoples who lived in this corner of the Carpathians: Boyko and Lemko farmsteads, and the houses of the Dolinianie and Pogorzanie further down. There are timber churches and tserkvas among them, an oil field with wooden derricks, windmills, a school and a fire station. One sector reconstructs a small-town market square of the nineteenth century with a chemist, a workshop and shopfronts fitted out. A separate building holds a large collection of icons.

What to look for

• The market square - a reconstructed small town of the nineteenth century with fitted-out shops.
• The Boyko and Lemko farmsteads - log houses with byre and living room under one roof.
• The moved churches - timber churches and tserkvas rebuilt among the trees.
• The icon gallery - hundreds of Carpathian icons in a purpose-built hall.

When to go

May to September, when the interiors are open and staffed; outside the season you may walk the grounds but many buildings stay shut. Mornings are quiet and the light through the trees is better. Folk craft demonstrations and events run on summer weekends, which is livelier but busier. Allow for a lot of walking on slopes.

Before you go

It is spread out and hilly, and covering it properly means three or four kilometres on gravel paths, which is hard going with a pushchair or in heat. Interiors are opened by staff who are not always present. Captions in English are limited. Sanok itself is a modest town, and rain turns the whole visit into a slog.

Nearby

The castle museum in Sanok, the Bieszczady mountains and the wooden tserkvas of the surrounding valleys.

Key facts