Photos

Old watermill with wooden bridge

The aim of founding the Szentendre Open Air Museum was to present folk architecture, interior decoration, farming and way of life in the Hungarian language area from the 2nd half of the 18th century to the 1st half of the 20th century, through original and authentic objects, relocated houses arranged in old settlement patters. The more and more elaborate settlement plan appropriates the relocation of more than 400 edifices into the museum, arranged into village-like regional units on the basis of ethnographical considerations.

Water-mill, Nyirád

The Episcopate of Veszprém allowed the building of the Honi-mill in the fields of Nyirád, at the mill-canal flowing from the Kigyós brook. Written sources mention it at the beginning of the 18th century, but in the middle of the century, it was abandoned off for 100 years, for reasons unknown. It has been rebuilt in 1840 with two sets of millstones.
In the building, which had been dismantled in 1981, only one set of millstones remained. We built up the mill in the Museum as it was rebuilt in the middle of the 19th century. We reconstructed its missing structural elements on the basis of field drawings from 1909 and with using structural elements of another dismantled mill. A wheelhouse with half-roof is attached to the stonewalled building covered with tiles, where two overshot wheels and the lock are installed.

Bakony, Balaton-Uplands region

Bakony recognised by its wood covered hills, while Balaton-Uplands recall gentle slopes rising above the glistening water and interesting volcanic shapes planted with grapes and press-houses. In the villages whitewashed, adorned gables, vaulted porches catches the eyes of the visitors together with colourful stone walls emerging from beneath the crumbling mortar.
Until the mountainous regions of historic Zala and Veszprém Counties were covered with unbroken leafy woods, the houses were mainly constructed with wooden and plaster walls. Parallel to the thinning out of woods, stone became the most significant material during the 18th century. The walls built from white, yellow and grey limestone, dolomite, red sandstone and black basalt give the villages a pculiar character. Serfs and other workers used quarry stones mixed with mud. The new building material affected the structure and form of houses: trough vault, constructed from flat stones and vaulted cellars were made, which enhanced the level of wine storing. The roofing and the ceiling of dwellings with black kitchen and three or four rooms were constructed from trimmed hardwood till the mid-19th century.
Sources of living in the Balaton-Uplands were wine and fishing (by the shore). In the Bakony area, it was animal husbandry and forest crafts (carving, lime-burning, potash cooking) were the main. Small amount of grain grew on the poor soil, so the population actively bartered with the inhabitants of the flat country. The wines of the area also reached Western-Hungary and Styria.
Due to sieges of fortresses, most of the villages were destroyed in the 16th-17th centuries. In conjuction with this the population also decreased. (Source: skanzen.hu)