Open-air museum in Kolbuszowa

The museum has officially operated since 1972, however much earlier, in December 1957, the District Culture Centre in Kolbuszowa organized the first exhibition presenting the cultural heritage of the Lasowiacy people and the artefacts shown on that occasion were the foundation for the collection acquired in the subsequent years. Currently, over 80 buildings and structures are on display in an area of approximately 30 hectares. The buildings presented in the ethnographic park - houses, barns, pigsties, windmills, an inn, a school and churches - date from the late 19th and early 20th century. An important component of the exhibition is the realistic setting of the specific buildings, with such features as orchards, ponds, gardens, and apiaries, so the visitors can see the rural landscape in its full glory. Animals kept in some farmyards add to the realism of the exposition.

The former lived in the vast wilderness of the Sandomierz Basin, while the latter inhabited its southern periphery, the area crossed by important trade routes leading eastward from Kraków and Przemyśl to Kyiv and southward from Sandomierz via the Carpathian Mountains to Hungary. The name Rzeszowiacy was first coined by ethnographers in the inter-war period with reference to the rural people living in the area surrounding the town of Rzeszów. In fact people living in the countryside in that area did not share a specific sense of identity with inhabitants of other villages nearby. On the other hand, the Lasowiacy people called themselves ‘Lesioki’ (forest people), which reflected the sense of their own distinctiveness from others. They were the largest ethnographic group in the Sandomierz Basin. Their life was inseparably linked with the forest that surrounded their villages. This close link is shown by their saying: ‘The forest is our father, and we, his children, are going to him’.

In addition to the exposition related to rural culture, the museum also presents the achievements of craftsmen from Kolbuszowa. This part of the collection includes  beautifully decorated furniture. The exhibits presenting the mastery of carpenters from Kolbuszowa include a sofa with walnut veneer and decorative sycamore inlays, made by carpenter Jan Turek in the 1920s for the Tyszkiewicz family from Werynia. To find out about the processes of applying veneer and inlays, you should visit the open-air museum in Kolbuszowa.