Arsenal: permanent exhibition ‘Tajemnice codzienności’ ★The former artillery arsenal of the Toruń Fortress, dating from 1824, is the museum's main building, and permanent exhibitions have been held here since 1960. Today it has the ticket desk and shop and the exhibition ‘Tajemnice codzienności. Kultura ludowa i jej pogranicza od Kujaw do Bałtyku (1850-1950)’ (Secrets of Everyday Life: Folk Culture and Its Borderlands from Kuyavia to the Baltic). It combines well with a walk round the open-air museum, because it shows objects from the same regions as the cottages.
Post mill from Wójtówka (1896) ★The post mill from Wójtówka in the Bądkowo municipality in Kuyavia was put up in 1896, and three generations of millers from the Salamoński family worked in it. The whole building turns on a thick pine post to set the sails to the wind, and its walls do not touch the ground. The windmill still works, and the museum sets it running during events in the park.
Cottage from Skórzenno (mid-19th c.) ★The cottage from Skórzenno in the Osiek municipality in Kociewie was built around the middle of the 19th century. It stands out with its exceptionally richly decorated door and shutters with plant motifs, and the entrance is set back in a recessed porch. Inside there is the grandparents' room with older furniture and the young couple's room with furniture from the early 20th century, and in the storeroom kitchen pots and supplies.
Cottage from Męcikał (early 19th c.) ★The cottage from Męcikał in the Brusy municipality in Kashubia was built at the beginning of the 19th century. Above the two entrances the roof juts out, forming a porch without posts. A three-generation family of a smallholder lived here; they fished and did seasonal work for richer farmers, while the grandfather wove baskets and kept bees, and the grandmother knew all about herbs.
Smoke hut from Laski (mid-19th c.) ★The cottage from Laski in the Śliwice municipality in the Tuchola Forest dates from around the middle of the 19th century. It is a smoke hut without a chimney: smoke from the open hearth rose into the attic and then out through openings in the gables, and the windows have ox bladder membranes instead of glass. A landless family lived here with hens and one goat, earning extra money by picking bilberries and mushrooms and working in the forest.
Cottage from Rakutowo (early 19th c.) ★The house of a well-off farmer from Rakutowo in the Kowal municipality in Kuyavia, built at the beginning of the 19th century. The interior shows the life of a two-generation family at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries: day to day they cooked, worked and slept in the kitchen, the storeroom and the small room, while the large room with pictures of saints was opened for holidays and family celebrations. A wooden well stands in front of the cottage.
Fire station from Pływaczewo (early 20th c.) ★The Volunteer Fire Brigade station from Pływaczewo in the Wąbrzeźno municipality was built at the beginning of the 20th century. The star exhibit is a horse-drawn fire engine from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries with a water tank and full equipment, and next to it, in a lean-to, stands a wooden water cart. By the fire station rises a bell tower with a cast-iron bell, which was rung to warn the village of a fire.
Smithy from Jastrzębie (2nd half of 19th c.) ★The smithy from Jastrzębie in the Bartniczka municipality was built in the second half of the 19th century. Inside stands a large two-horned anvil and a smaller auxiliary one, behind them the forge, and blacksmith's tools lie on the table with vices and hang on the walls. In front of the smithy stands a special cage, into which a restless horse was led to be shod.
Cottage with stable from Sucha (early 19th c.) ★The cottage with a stable from Sucha in the Lubiewo municipality in the Tuchola Forest dates from the early 19th century. The entrance is sheltered by a decoratively cut corner porch, and the gable is adorned with boards laid in a herringbone pattern, round openings and a wooden bird on the top of the roof. The older farmers lived in one room among 19th-century furniture, the younger ones with their children in the other, and everyone shared a kitchen.
Watermill from Strzygi (early 20th c.) ★The watermill from Strzygi in the Osiek municipality in the Dobrzyń land was built at the beginning of the 20th century and opened to visitors in the park in 1991. It was first driven by a water wheel, later by a turbine, and a transmission system powered the husking machine, elevators and roller mill on three floors. Inside you will see the original equipment and machinery from the time it was modernised.
Manor granary from Bronisław (1767)The manor granary from Bronisław in Kuyavia was built in 1767. In granaries like this the manor kept the grain from its farm, which is why the building is many times larger than the peasant's little granary in the Kuyavian farmstead. Walk all the way round it and take a look at the tall, hipped thatched roof.
Cowshed from Rakutowo, known as the gliniankaThis livestock building from Rakutowo in Kuyavia, known as the glinianka (clay house), is a reconstruction of a cowshed from the second half of the 19th century. The walls were plastered with clay mixed with straw and whitewashed with lime, and the roof is thatched. Inside there is a henhouse, a cowshed and a stable, and where the pigsty used to be there is now an oil press showing how oil was pressed on the farm for the family's own use.
Barn from Kowal (1806)The barn from Kowal in Kuyavia was built in 1806. It is the largest building of the Kuyavian farmstead: a cart loaded with hay or grain drove in through the wide doors, and there are no windows, because light was not needed here. A threshing floor runs down the middle, where grain was threshed and farm machinery kept, and on either side there are two storage bays for unthreshed grain, straw and hay.
Bread oven from KashubiaThis free-standing bread oven is a reconstruction of a Kashubian oven from the end of the 19th century. Ovens like this were built near the farmstead, in a field, garden or orchard, and several families or one well-off farm baked bread in them. The oven, on a stone base, is sheltered by a steep little roof of boards.
Cowshed from Kłodawa (early 19th c.)The cowshed from Kłodawa in the Chojnice municipality in Kashubia dates from the early 19th century. Inside there are three separate rooms for animals, and on the right a cart shed, all under one thatched roof. Old farm tools stand along the walls, including a plough, which children can look at up close.
Horse gin from Wierzchucin KrólewskiThis wooden horse gin stands in the Tuchola farmstead under a roof supported on posts. A horse walking round and round a circular path turned the mechanism, and its movement was passed on to farm machines. Around the gin you can see the timber-lined ring the animal walked on.
Photo 1bumer, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Photo Dawid Galus, CC BY-SA 3.0 pl, Wikimedia Commons1
Photo 1bumer, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Photo Dawid Galus, CC BY-SA 3.0 pl, Wikimedia Commons
Photo 1bumer, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Photo Dawid Galus, CC BY-SA 3.0 pl, Wikimedia Commons
Photo 1bumer, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Photo Dawid Galus, CC BY-SA 3.0 pl, Wikimedia Commons
Photo Dawid Galus, CC BY-SA 3.0 pl, Wikimedia Commons
Photo 1bumer, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Photo Dawid Galus, CC BY-SA 3.0 pl, Wikimedia Commons
Photo 1bumer, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Photo Łukasz Bakuła, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Photo Mateusz Giełczyński, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons