Zakopane Style Villas

In the 1890s Stanislaw Witkiewicz, a painter and critic, argued that the carpentry of the Podhale highlanders contained the basis of a genuinely Polish architecture, at a moment when there was no Polish state and the question mattered politically. He designed a series of villas in Zakopane to prove it: Koliba in 1892-1893, then Pod Jedlami, Oksza and others, using the highland forms - a high stone footing, horizontal log walls, a steep shingled roof with a decorated gable, carved sunburst motifs, projecting eaves - at the scale of a bourgeois house. The style spread across Poland and into furniture and interiors. Koliba now holds the museum of the Zakopane Style and Oksza is a gallery, so two of the originals can be entered. The oldest wooden buildings in town are on Koscieliska street, including the church and cemetery at Peksowy Brzyzek where many Polish artists are buried.

What you actually see

• Villa Koliba - Witkiewicz's first, 1892-1893, now the style's museum.
• Highland forms enlarged - stone footing, log walls, steep shingled roof, carved gables.
• Koscieliska street - the oldest wooden houses, church and old cemetery.
• Villa Oksza - a second original, open as a gallery.

When to go

All year. Half a day.

Honest expectations

Most villas are private and seen only from the street. Museum branches close on Mondays and have separate tickets. Zakopane's centre is very commercial and the villas are scattered among it.

Nearby

The Tatras and Krupowki are close; Chocholow is west.