Vlkolínec, Slovakia

in Ancient Cities Wonders of the Modern World by admin — February 20, 2011 at 4:04 am | 0 comments

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Vlkolínec, situated in the centre of Slovakia, is a remarkably intact settlement of 45 buildings with the conventional features of a central European village. It is the region’s most complete group of these kinds of traditional log houses, often found in mountainous areas.

Vlkolinec is a remarkably intact unitary negotiation of a attribute central European type with log-built structures, which is often found in mountainous areas. The layout of the town has remained practically unchanged and the executive style has been fully retained. There are forty five unaltered buildings in the outfit, keeping many early constructional features. It is the best preserved and most thorough set of traditional vernacular buildings in the Slovak Republic. It has preserved its ancient appearance with remarkable fidelity: although it is now in its nineteenth-hundred years guise, Vlkolinec is basically the same as it has been for a much lengthier period.

There was an earlier Slav negotiation on the site from the Burgwall (walled negotiation) period (10th-12th centuries AD). The first documentary record dates from 1376, and in a document of 1469 research is made to five named streets. In 1675 there were only four homesteads and five residences of servants of the nearby Likava manor, of which Vlkolinec always seems to have been a fief. A decree of 1630 suggests that the name derives from the important charge laid upon the villagers to maintain the wolf-pits in good order. The present negotiation consists almost completely of buildings from the nineteenth century.

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The characteristic houses of Vlkolinec are situated on the street frontages of narrow holdings, with stables, smaller outbuildings, and barns ranged behind them. The main street, which is on a comparatively steep slope, forks in the centre of the village. Parts of the northern end of the village were destroyed by fire in the Second World War and have not been rebuilt. A canalized stream flows through the village. The houses are of the traditional central Slovak timber-built (Blockbau) type. This comprises of log walls on stone footings, the walls being covered with clay and whitewashed or colored blue. Over 50% of them have 3 rooms; some are smaller and others double. The roofs are pitched and semi-hipped, and were initially covered with wooden shingles. They are entered from elongated yards shared with several other houses.

There are 47 traditional farmhouses of this type and a shop and schoolhouse from the end of the nineteenth hundred years. The Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary dates from 1875, but the belfry was built in 1770.

One particularly fascinating feature of the settlement is the fact that the parcels of land that surround it retain the elongated strip shape characteristic of medieval land allotment over most of feudal Europe. Outside these lie the areas of common land and woodland which are also important elements of the feudal scenery (although these have been considerably changed in later centuries through forestry and pasturage).