Peasant Homestead (Zagroda Włościańska) in Częstochowa

A white, single-storey house with a tall tiled roof and a wooden porch sits in Staszic Park below Jasna Góra, looking as if it had been moved here from a village. In fact it was never a farm: it is an exhibition pavilion from 1909, designed as a model peasant homestead. Today it belongs to the Częstochowa Museum and is one of the few surviving relics of a major industrial and agricultural fair that drew more than half a million visitors.

History: a pavilion of the Industry and Agriculture Exhibition

The Industry and Agriculture Exhibition ran in Częstochowa from 5 August to 3 October 1909. Chaired by Prince Stefan Lubomirski, it brought together 660 exhibitors and more than half a million visitors, and the parks below Jasna Góra were redesigned for the occasion by Franciszek Szanior. The homestead was built in 1908–1909 to a design by Zdzisław Kalinowski and Czesław Przybylski. It was meant to show the stylistic trends of the day in rural house-building and serve as a pattern for new farmsteads.

What to look for

The building is made of brick, with a single storey, a partial cellar, a usable attic and a gabled roof on a timber frame. Its most distinctive features are the wooden gable with small windows and the entrance porch with benches. In 2003–2006 it underwent a full restoration supervised by heritage conservators, which kept the shape of the building and roof, the porch, the brick vaulted cellars and the original floor plan.

The homestead today

According to the Częstochowa Museum, the building now houses the offices of the Częstochowa Tourist Organisation, so it is something to admire from outside rather than a museum with an exhibition. It stands on 7 Kamienic Street, which wraps around the southern side of the Jasna Góra hill. In the same park complex you can see other pavilions from 1909: the Ethnographic Pavilion, the former Hygiene Museum (now the Temporary Exhibitions Pavilion) and the pavilion of the Zawiercie joint-stock company, which houses the Zodiak centre.

Tripto tip

The homestead is easy to combine with a visit to Jasna Góra – it is a few minutes' walk through the park. The building itself takes 10–15 minutes, but it is worth walking round the whole park complex and looking into the Częstochowa Museum pavilions. Check their current opening hours on the museum's website.