The outdoor ethnographic museum in Tihany consists of typical examples of the folk buildings of the Upper Balaton region. They were built using locally sourced stone and covered with thatch. The fishermen’s guild house belongs to an older style, where the different rooms are entered from separately from the porch. The main attraction of the house is the smokey kitchen.
The farmhouse – with its porch resembling to those of curias, and its chimneyless kitchen – represents a later, „more developed” phase of rural architecture. Here, all the rooms are entered from the atrium, as both the kitchen and the bedroom have chimneys. Here, the porch is covered, resulting in an extra room, showing changes in modern times.
The heating in both houses is provided by the locally emblematic eyetiled-oven, the one in the farmhouse a latter type, taking after examples in towns. The objects used in the houses also reflect this time differenc: the fishermen’s guilde house takes us to the turn of the 19-20th century, while the farmhouse is conformed to the 1940-50s, when also tourism was taking place.
The exhibiton in the fishermen’s guild house is focusing on the topic of fishing, as this was the house of the chairman of the so called „disznósi” guild, where the meetings were held. But it must be stressed, that none of the fishing utensils, showcased here, have ever entered this yard, as normally they were stored at the lake-shore chalet, only the net was taken home occasionally for mending.
Our guide during our time-travel is Mrs. Pál Pintér, aunt Lidi, who moved to Tihany in 1937 from County Somogy, and became a renowned collector of local customs and traditions, also the story-teller not only of the village but also of the Balaton region. She summaized her research in countless papers, now kept in the collection os the Laczkó Dezső Museum. This exhibition serves also a memento to her undertaking.
From the interior of the room, we can infer the aspirations of the owner family to follow the civil model…
From the thirties of the twentieth century, it was also typical in Tihany that local families let out one room of their farmhouses to those wishing to take a vacation…
Entering the room, interestingly, we find ourselves not in the kitchen, but precisely in the vestibule, which in our region is called the atrium…
The furnishings of the living room of the fishermen’s guild hall on the one hand recall an important episode of Tihany’s fishing life, and on the other hand provide an insight into the 19th century housing culture…
In addition to viticulture, the main livelihood of the people on the shores of Balaton was fishing for centuries. This was especially true in Tihany, where the coastal waters…
Smokehouses were not rare in the Balaton highlands even in the twentieth century, usually owned by poorer families or elderly people who did not modernize the premises…
