Korkosz Farmstead in Czarna Góra

The Korkosz Farmstead (Zagroda Korkoszów) is a branch of the Tatra Museum in Czarna Góra, one of the fourteen villages of Polish Spiš, founded at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries on the Białka river. The farmstead stands in the northern part of the village known locally as Zagóra, and shows how a prosperous Spiš family lived between the two world wars — in contrast to the poor Sołtys Farmstead in neighbouring Jurgów.

The farmstead illustrates well how a Spiš holding grew. At the end of the 19th century Alojzy Chyżny built a simple house and stable here. He spent several years working in America, and after returning in 1919 he added a spacious "great room" with a store room to the house. The farmstead was further extended by Sebastian Korkosz, husband of Alojzy's daughter Elżbieta: in the 1930s a stone stable and a cart shed were built, and the village's first horse-gin (kierat) was installed in the old stable. The last extension came in the 1940s, when a "summer" or "lordly" room for guests with its own entrance through an added porch replaced the store room. At the end of the 1940s the Korkosz family moved permanently to Slovakia, where their descendants still live. In 1980 they handed the farmstead over to the state, wishing that a museum be created here; after conservation work the Tatra Museum arranged an ethnographic exhibition.

What to see

• The hallway with a carpentry workshop — the owner made his own furniture and vessels; there are also wooden milk vessels, a mortar and hand querns. From the hallway stairs lead to the loft, where grain was kept in bins and food in chests and tubs.
• The kitchen — once the centre of family life: people slept, ate, baked bread and spun flax and wool here.
• The "great room", used as a bedroom, a store for festive clothing and the place for family celebrations.
• The "lordly room", furnished as in the 1940s, with a loom still in use, and sculptures and photographs of this artistically gifted family, which included carvers, a painter on glass and a weaver; among them Ludwik Korkosz's carving "Christ Falling under the Cross" and his plaster head of Sebastian Korkosz.
• The stone stable with an exhibition on flax processing — tools for breaking, combing and spinning flax.
• The cart shed with a cart, wicker baskets and wooden "obońki" barrels used to bring milk down from the mountain pastures, as well as a wooden device for lifting a house when replacing its sill beams.

Practical information

Czarna Góra lies 18 km from Zakopane and from Nowy Targ, 15 km from Niedzica and 14 km from Łysa Polana. The farmstead is in the Zagóra part of the village, house number 86; it is easiest to come by car. In summer the museum is open almost every day, out of season from Wednesday to Sunday; the permanent exhibition is free on Thursdays. A visit takes 30–45 minutes. The buildings are old, with thresholds and stairs to the loft, so wheelchair users should phone ahead. Children find it interesting: the cart, querns, horse-gin and loom explain well how a village worked without electricity.

Nearby: trails and peaks

600 m from the farmstead runs our trail Trybsz – Polana Podokólne, and a kilometre away the long Brzeźnica – Kacwin route across the hills of Spiš. The humbler counterpart of this holding is the Sołtys Farmstead in Jurgów, just a few kilometres to the south.

Official website: muzeumtatrzanskie.pl

Photos: Waraciła, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons; Marta Malina Moraczewska, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons; Arvedui89, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.