Open-air Ethnographic Museum - Szentendre Skanzen

The Open-Air Museum of Ethnography is a non-profit, permanent national institution, open to the public and dedicated to serving society and its development. Its core mission involves researching folk architecture, housing culture, and traditional lifestyles, collecting their tangible and intangible heritage across Hungarian-speaking territories, preserving this rich legacy, and making its collection widely accessible through diverse, participation-based programs.

The purpose of establishing the Szentendre Open-Air Museum of Ethnography is to showcase the folk architecture, housing culture, farming practices, and lifestyle of the Hungarian-speaking territories. It achieves this through original, relocated buildings, authentic artifacts, and within the framework of traditional settlement forms, covering the period from the mid-18th century to the first half of the 20th century.

The continuously refined settlement plan aims to relocate more than 400 structures to the museum. These are organized into village-like building clusters, known as “tájegységek” (regional units), based on settlement ethnography principles, for visitors to explore. Within these regional units, the structures are arranged to reflect the traditional layout of a peasant farmstead, complemented by sacred, communal, and economic buildings that were once integral to the traditional village landscape. The residential houses and farm buildings represent the historically developed house types and characteristic outbuildings of each region.

There are 8 regional units located within the museum. Descriptions of these units can be accessed by clicking on their names, and the years indicate when each regional unit was opened.

Upper Tisza Region (1974)

Great Plain Market Town

Little Hungarian Plain (1987)

Western Transdanubia (1993)

Bakony, Balaton Uplands (2000)

Southern Transdanubia (2005)

Upland Market Town (2006)

Northern Hungarian Village (2010) – Winner of Exhibition of the Year

Transylvania (under construction, opening: 2022)

Source: https://skanzen.hu/hu