Kovács Zsuzsa: Göcsej Village Museum. Exhibition Guide (Zalaegerszeg, 2008)

A MUSEUM COMING IN TO EXISTENCE The Göcsej Village Museum in Zalaegerszeg was one of the first open-air museums in Hungary, opened in 1968. Following on from some foreign examples, it was a big sensation that an open-air collection could be set up in Hungary too. That is why even before the opening there were so many articles about it in the local and national papers. The evening news on the Hungarian State Channel regularly broadcast about the building works and then about the completed village. The Göcsej Village Museum was given the museum site in 24 September 1964 The most archaic region of the country Not far from the city centre, on the bank of the backwater of the River Zala, the new exhibition was built which was to show the folk-architecture of the Göcsej region in Zala County in the 19th century as well as the life and lifestyle of the peasants living there at that time. Göcsej existed in nearly untouched isolation until the middle of the 20th century - when roads started to be built and regular bus services were introduced. This unique situation conserved the village structures, the traditional ways of building houses, the shapes and arrangements of the buildings and also the ways of farming and lifestyles. In the 1950s there were quite a lot of thatched buildings and archaic houses with smoky kitchens and no chimneys that were typical of the previous centuries. From the