A Herman Ottó Múzeum Évkönyve 46. (2007)
ELŐADÁSOK A VALLONOK TÖRTENETÉHEZ - Miklós Cseri: Hungarian Open Air Museum Regional unit: Markét town from Northern Hungary
HUNGARIAN OPEN AIR MUSEUM REGIONAL UNIT: MARKET TOWN FROM NORTHERN HUNGARY MIKLÓS CSERI The Hungarian Open Air Museum The Hungarian Open-Air Museum is Hungary's central collection of architectural relics. The Museum is situated in the outskirts of Szentendre, in the valley of the brook Sztaravoda, occupying 60 hectares. It receives 180-200 000 visitors a year. Ever since 1967, the year of its foundation, the basic task of the museum is the research of the vernacular architecture together with its interior design and the collecting of the material remains in this field. The Museum presents the material remains of the traditional culture in permanent and temporary exhibitions (mainly as interiors) staged in buildings, which were dismantled in their original location and re-erected in the Museum. Following the concept, Hungary's characteristic architecture zones shall be presented in nine regional units, arranged in nine settlement units. So far, following units are completed and accessible for visitors: UpperTisza region (1974), Kisalföld (1987), Western Transdanubia (1993), Bakony, Balaton-Highland (2000), and the market town of the Great Hungarian Plain is permanently under construction (1992-). The building of the unit Southern-Transdanubia began at the end of 2001, opening is scheduled for 2005. And we started with the construction works in the regional unit of Northern Hungary in October 2003. The regional unit Northern Hungary in the Hungarian Open Air Museum Subject of the Hungarian Open Air Museum's project for scientific research and permanent exhibitions is the culture in the market towns in the Northern Mountains of Northern Hungary. The subject is little-known and hardly appreciated from the point of view of historical research and of the preservation of the material culture, and still it is an important part of our national heritage. The Hungarian Open Air Museum is the first to undertake the presentation of the region by adopting a comprehensive culture historic and historic-ethnographic approach. The ethnographic collections and research in the historic archives as well as the technical surveys carried out during the last thirty years serve the purposes of constructing the group of buildings. Wine production, wine trade and the activities of the guilds characterize mainly this typical culture with stone architecture in the 17 th —19 th centuries. It is typical and unique for the region that the monoculture of wine production had a town developing function. During many centuries the white wine of Tokaj, considered as a hungaricum and the products of the typical red wine culture of Gyöngyös were popular beyond Hungary's 587
