Little Farmers. Childhood Below the Tatras

The Tatra Museum reopened its restored manor house in Łopuszna with a show of archive photographs of village children from the foothills of the Tatras, on view from 11 July 2026 to 1 June 2027. Mind the address: this is not in Zakopane but at 2 Gorczańska Street in Łopuszna, a village in the rural district of Nowy Targ on regional road 969 from Nowy Targ to Krościenko. The museum’s words below are translated from its Polish page; it publishes no English version of it.

Tatra Museum in Zakopane on the exhibition:

The exhibition “Little Farmers. Childhood Below the Tatras” is a picture of childhood in the traditional rural culture of the Polish Tatra foothills, captured in photographic frames. It covers the period from the end of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th. It introduces us to some selected aspects of the lives of the youngest inhabitants of the villages below the Tatras.

The exhibition brings closer a childhood that was not easy, poor in clothes and toys, burdened with many chores, but also not without warmth and joyful experiences.

What to expect

Until the manor’s permanent exhibition opens, this is the only display you can see inside. The museum says restoration and conservation work on the manor complex is still under way and promises the permanent exhibition “in a year”, without a date. The interior of the Klamerus cottage, which stands outside the manor fence on the road into the village, is currently closed. The opening on 10 July 2026 doubled as the reopening of the manor after its renovation.

The show is built mainly from photographs. The museum sums up their subjects as the chores, games and family life of the region’s youngest inhabitants. The images come from the Tatra Museum, the Ethnographic Museum in Kraków, the National Archives in Kraków and the Tatra Documentation Centre of the Tatra National Park, with some from private owners. The curator is Anna Kozak.

Allow 30-45 minutes for the exhibition; if you also want to walk round the manor complex and see the Klamerus cottage from outside, give it an hour. Worth it if you are interested in the ethnography of the Podhale region or in early photography, and for families with school-age children, who will find plenty to talk about in their counterparts from a hundred years ago. Do not expect anything hands-on: the museum announces photographs, not play stations.

A special trip from Zakopane for this show alone pays off only if the subject draws you. It fits best as a stop on the way from Nowy Targ towards Czorsztyn, the route the museum itself suggests for visiting the manor, or before the trail to Turbacz, the highest peak of the Gorce range, which starts in the village. With a single free afternoon in Zakopane, you will get more from the museum’s main building on Krupówki.

Context

Highland farms in Podhale were poor: Polish Wikipedia notes that families lived mostly on potatoes and a thick porridge called bryja, while white cheese, butter, oscypek and eggs were kept above all for sale. In higher villages such as Zakopane and Bukowina Tatrzańska, the priest Józef Stolarczyk recorded in his memoirs that potatoes were sometimes dug out from under the snow at the turn of September and October. Łopuszna lies lower, on the Dunajec river at the foot of the Gorce Mountains; the philosopher and priest Józef Tischner grew up and went to primary school here, and a house in the village centre, the Tischnerówka, keeps a memorial room devoted to him.

Tickets and time

• Exhibition ticket: 10 PLN, reduced 5 PLN. With the Polish Large Family Card (Karta Dużej Rodziny) 5 PLN per person; groups of 15 or more 9 PLN each; a guided tour 30 PLN. Residents of the districts of Biały Dunajec, Bukowina Tatrzańska, Czarny Dunajec, Kościelisko, Nowy Targ, Poronin and Szaflary and of the towns of Nowy Targ and Zakopane pay 1 PLN.
• Weekly combined ticket 69 PLN, reduced 34 PLN, valid at all open Tatra Museum branches, the manor included. It pays off only if you visit several branches in Zakopane in the same week.
• The free Thursday does not cover this show - an inference from the price list, not a statement by the museum. The museum names Thursday as its free day for permanent exhibitions; the manor currently shows only this temporary exhibition and its price list has only a temporary-exhibition ticket. Call ahead if you plan a Thursday visit. The rules are on the opening hours and prices page (in Polish).
• Hours: Wednesday to Sunday 9:00-16:00 (9 AM to 4 PM), last entry 15:30; closed Monday and Tuesday. Unlike some branches, such as the Korkosz Farmstead, the manor has no separate summer and winter hours, so this schedule should hold for the whole run, winter included. The museum posts one-off changes in its news and on the manor’s page.
• Getting there and access. The manor stands about 250 m from the main road through Łopuszna, along an unpaved path. There is no marked car park; a few cars fit on the unpaved ground by the gate. Two steps without handrails lead up to the porch, with no ramp. The museum’s branch page gives the address and a map link but no public transport directions, so a car makes the trip much simpler.
• Toilet and cloakroom. The museum’s accessibility page says the manor’s toilet is not open to visitors and there is nowhere to leave coats or bags. The page is undated and may not have been updated after the renovation, so if you are travelling with small children, check by phone: +48 535 668 777.
• English on site: the museum states nothing about English captions, an audio guide or English-language tours for this show. Expect Polish captions; the photographs speak for themselves, the context around them does not.

See also

• Tatra Museum profile - the main building at 10 Krupówki Street, with a full-size model of a Podhale cottage and its black and white rooms, the kind of interior the children in these photographs grew up in.
• Podhale Museum in Nowy Targ - in the town hall on the Nowy Targ market square, on the way from Zakopane to Łopuszna, on the guild crafts the town lived by at the turn of the 20th century, the same years as the photographs.
• Orava Ethnographic Park in Zubrzyca Górna - full-size farmsteads and cottages, a good companion to this show for families with children.
• Jan Gryboś “In the Rhythm of the Old Village” - folk sculpture about village life in the open-air museum in Szymbark, until 14 November 2026.

Museum profile: Tatra Museum in Zakopane .