Photo Krzysztof Bulla, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia CommonsUpper Silesian Ethnographic Park in Chorzów. In the Turi app, the same map shows your position, guides you from point to point and lets you tick off the places you’ve visited.
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The Upper Silesian Ethnographic Park in Chorzów is an open-air museum in Silesian Park, opened to visitors on 1 June 1975. On about 33 hectares stand around 78 historic buildings from the 17th to the 20th century: cottages, granaries, barns, two windmills, a watermill, smithies, a school, an inn, a lock-up and two wooden churches. The buildings were moved from the eastern part of Upper Silesia and from the Dąbrowa Basin and arranged in sectors matching the regions, from the Silesian Beskids to the Lubliniec area. Many cottages have old-style interiors, and sheep, goats, a cow, a horse and rabbits live in the farmsteads.
Photo Krzysztof Bulla, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons1This cottage from 1876 comes from the mountain village of Istebna and, together with the pigsty, forms what is called a meadow farmstead; it is the first building on the visitor route. The date of construction and a rosette were carved on a beam in the main room. Inside there is a highlanders' room with a table, benches and a bed, and at Easter the museum lays out a traditional Easter breakfast here.
Photo Krzysztof Bulla, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons2A fulling mill was used to thicken and felt woollen fabric, turning it into strong broadcloth. Small village workshops like this once worked in many places in the mountains. The fulling mill from Brenna, dating from 1920, did not survive, so the museum rebuilt it from records, and since 2014 its mechanism has been driven by water brought in along a wooden channel.
Photo Abraham, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons3This tannery from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries comes from Koniaków in the Silesian Beskids, where highlanders tanned animal hides. Inside is the exhibition ‘Na własnej skórze. Tradycyjne garbarstwo’ (Traditional Tanning): a narrator speaking the Koniaków dialect welcomes visitors, and the tools being described light up one by one. You can also see tanned hides and a 3D-printed model of the interior.
Photo Abraham, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons4This house from 1794 stood in Istebna and is the main cottage of the Beskid farmstead of a wealthy peasant, which also includes the barn and small pigsty from Istebna, the granary with cellar from Brenna and a kopiniec. The museum calls it a courtyard cottage; the farm buildings stand around a yard. Take a look at the carved door and the porch running along the wall, and there is a multimedia guide by the cottage.
Photo Krzysztof Bulla, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons5This cottage from 1809 comes from Stary Groń in Brenna and is one of the oldest dwelling houses in the museum. Hill farmsteads (groń) were once built high up on mountain ridges, far from the village, so it stands with the weaver's cottage on a small rise, off the main route. Up close you can see the intricate joints of the beams at the corners.
Photo Krzysztof Bulla, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons6This cottage from 1820 comes from Stary Groń in Brenna and belonged to the same owner as the neighbouring hill farm cottage. Both stand on a small rise, away from the main route, because hill farmsteads were once built high in the mountains, far from the village. Inside is a weaver's workshop with a loom, spinning wheels and other tools for spinning.
Photo Abraham, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons7This smithy from 1843 comes from Zamarski in the Cieszyn Foothills and belongs to the farmstead of a moderately well-off peasant, together with the cottage from Bażanowice and the barn from Ustroń. Inside and under the eaves the blacksmith's equipment has survived: an anvil, a heavy cast-iron plate with holes for shaping iron and old machines. During events there are blacksmithing demonstrations here.
Photo Krzysztof Bulla, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons8This cottage from 1872 comes from Bażanowice in the Cieszyn Foothills and is the house of the farmstead of a moderately well-off peasant, which also includes the barn from Ustroń and the smithy from Zamarski. It has a shingle roof with half-hipped ends and a porch by the entrance. The museum devoted a separate booklet to it, describing the history of the village and the families who farmed here, as well as changes to the house's structure and furnishings.
Photo Abraham, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons9The building was put up in 1853 in Wapienica, now a district of Bielsko-Biała, and was meant from the start to be a village primary school. The classroom has old desks, a blackboard and the teacher's desk, and next to it is the room where the teacher lived. During the ‘W starej szkole’ (In the Old School) activity, children sit at the desks, write with a slate pencil on a slate and try writing with a dip pen.
Photo Abraham, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons10This small wooden building with a metal wind turbine on the roof was built in 1918 in Nierodzim, now a district of Ustroń. It belongs to the farmstead of a wealthy peasant from Goleszów, and inside stands a wind-powered machine for grinding grain. It is interesting to compare it with the wooden windmill from Grzawa, which stands in another part of the museum.
Photo Krzysztof Bulla, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons11This large cottage from 1886 comes from Goleszów in the Cieszyn Foothills and is the only building in the museum built of logs with an external post frame. Protestants lived in it, so the interiors are furnished as in Protestant homes. In the pigsty under the same roof there is an exhibition called ‘Niecki i koryta’ (Kneading Troughs and Feeding Troughs), and the farmstead looks out over meadows and cottages.
Photo Waraciła, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons12This impressive manor granary from 1738 comes from Simoradz in the Cieszyn Foothills and is a two-storey building with wide shingled eaves. For years it was closed to visitors, and today it houses the permanent exhibition ‘ULiversum’ about bees and how they live alongside people. It stands on Mała Łąka, about 700 metres from the ticket desk, and the path there leads past the museum's apiaries.
Photo Marek Mróz, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons13This octagonal barn from around the middle of the 19th century comes from Brzeźce in the Pszczyna area and belongs to the farmstead of a wealthy peasant from Frydek. Its tall thatched roof comes down low over the log walls. Grain and straw were stored in it, and there is a transmitter for the museum's multimedia guide by the barn.
Photo Marek Mróz, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons14This cottage from 1852, with a thick thatched roof, comes from Frydek near Pszczyna and is the house of a wealthy farmer's farmstead, which also includes the barn from Brzeźce, the sheds from Kryry and Kobiór, a pigsty and the well from Łąka. Wicker fences stand around the yard, and by the farmstead there is an apiary where beekeeping demonstrations are held. At Christmas a sheaf of hay stands in the main room.
Photo Krzysztof Bulla, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons15This thatched cottage from 1857 comes from Dziećkowice, now a district of Mysłowice, and shows the farmstead of a landless peasant, which consisted of just one building. The modest rooms have simple furniture, and a colourful little garden grows in front of the cottage. During events there are demonstrations of washing clothes on a washboard by the cottage.
Photo Konrad Kurzacz Pimke e-mail: konrad.kurzacz@gmail.com, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons16The windmill was probably built in the first half of the 19th century on a hill outside the village of Grzawa, and in 1964 it was moved to the museum as the second building in its history. It was originally a post mill, and was later rebuilt as a paltrok mill, which turned on rollers along a rail to set its sails to the wind. After a renovation completed in 2014 it works again: during events the museum sets it running and gives tours of the inside with its millstones.
Photo real name: Jacek Durski pl.wiki: Durski commons: Durski…, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons17The watermill comes from Imielin, from the part called Jamnice, and belongs to the mill farmstead together with the granary from Warszowice and the barn from Grzawa. In 2014, after the building was renovated and the watercourses recreated, it was set running for the first time away from its original site. You can see the wooden water wheel by the building, and during demonstrations the millstone grinder and the roller mill are at work.
Photo Krzysztof Bulla, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons18The wooden Church of St Joseph the Worker was built in 1791 in the village of Nieboczowy on the Oder, which no longer exists on the map. In 1971 it was moved to Kłokocin, and in 1995 to the museum, where it was consecrated in 1997. It has a shingle roof with two onion-domed turrets and covered walkways around the walls, and inside stands an 18th-century altar from Moszczenica. Mass is celebrated here from May to October.
Photo Krzysztof Bulla, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons19This 19th-century wooden lock-up comes from Skrzyszów in Wodzisław district. According to the museum, it is the only public building of its kind in the open-air museum and probably the last surviving wooden lock-up of this type in Poland. It stands in the centre of the exhibition, not far from the inn and the church.
Photo Marek Mróz, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons20This wooden inn from 1870 comes from Świerczyniec and stands in the Pszczyna and Rybnik part of the museum. Inns were once places where villagers rested, celebrated and met, and the museum published a separate booklet about this one, because its out-of-the-way location and the fate of the people who lived there long remained a mystery. Today the building houses the ‘Karczma U Brożka’ restaurant, and right next to it is the open-air museum's stage, where concerts and events take place.
Photo Marek Mróz, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons21This cottage comes from the former village of Katowice, from the settlement of Drajok, and the last but one village head (sołtys) of Katowice lived in it, which is why the museum calls it the village head's cottage. It stands in a farmstead together with the dovecote from Dąbrówka Mała and the small pigsty from Bogucice. The entrances are sheltered by a wooden porch with openwork boards, and in the rooms you will see a dresser, a table and beds; at Christmas and Easter the cottage is decorated in the traditional way.
Photo Marek Mróz, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons22This dovecote on a tall pole comes from Dąbrówka Mała, now a district of Katowice, and was built at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The polygonal birdhouse has entry holes and a little shingle roof. It stands in the village head's farmstead with the cottage from Katowice, and right next to it, behind the fence, you can see the small 19th-century pigsty from Bogucice.
Photo Krzysztof Bulla, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons23This modest cottage from around the middle of the 19th century comes from Bykowina, now a district of Ruda Śląska; the last people to live in it were a typical Silesian working-class family. In the museum it has been fitted out as an old village shop with a counter, scales and shelves of goods. A curiosity is a refrigerator from the 1930s, which you can see on the museum's ethnographic walks.
Photo Krzysztof Bulla, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons24This cottage from 1851 comes from Kalina in the Lubliniec area and was built for two families: the farmer and the older couple who had handed the farm over to him. Today it is called the herbalist's cottage: one room shows folk herbal medicine and the other beliefs and magic on a village farm. Bunches of herbs dry by the door, and on the museum's ethnographic walks children taste herbal infusions.
Photo Marek Mróz, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons25This thatched cottage from 1874 comes from Łazy near Błędów in the Dąbrowa Basin and is the house of a wealthy peasant's farmstead with a barn, a smithy with a cart shed and a well. The museum's animals live in the farmstead: goats, a cow and a horse, and next to it stand the hives of the farmstead's apiary. In front of the cottage there is a garden surrounded by a picket fence.
Photo Krzysztof Bulla, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons26This manor granary from 1730 comes from Bujaków, now a district of Mikołów, and came to the museum in 1969 as one of its first buildings. The long building of thick logs with a tall shingle roof was used to store grain from the manor's fields. In 2021 it was the first to be conserved under the museum's programme to save its wooden buildings.
Photo Krzysztof Bulla, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons27This church was built for the Protestants of the workers' housing estate in Bobrek from ready-made wooden parts bought from the firm Christoph und Unmack of Niesky in Lusatia, and consecrated in 1932. After a fire in 2014 the surviving structure was dismantled, moved to the museum and rebuilt, and it reopened in 2017. It is one of the few examples of prefabricated church architecture; services and concerts are held here.
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