Malevana hut: bright Polish village where each house is painted by hand

About seventy kilometers from Polish Krakow, there is an unusual village famous for its painted houses. Little white houses, on which a lot of floral ornaments, just came out of the page of folk tales. And this tradition began very banal: it was necessary to somehow hide the terrible blackness of the walls.

Cover up the black walls

With colorful ornaments, houses in Zalipye began to be decorated in the 19th century. However, the love of creativity was nevertheless forced: the locals tried to paint the unsightly blackened walls. The fact is that old stoves were installed in the houses at that time, and the walls from soot inside the house and outside began to darken over time. So at first they were simply whitened, and then an ornament began to appear on the houses. At first it was very straightforward: geometric lines and dots, zigzags, circles. But, apparently, the housewives were so carried away by painting that they began to create real masterpieces.

It all started with stoves and walls, then the doors and windows began to be framed with ornaments, and later local artists generally parted, painting everything: wells, doghouses, sheds and utility rooms. And they painted not with ordinary paint, but only with that which was available. There is soot, and brown clay, and lime. Milk, sugar and eggs replaced the glue, and even the craftswomen made brushes themselves - from horse and human hair. So Zalipye became a real fairytale village where tourists come.

Malevana hut

Probably, colorful houses and the tradition of painting them would have long disappeared, if not for one fateful meeting. At the beginning of the twentieth century, an office clerk visited here, who fell in love with the brightness and originality of the village. And soon, in one of the local ethnographic magazines, his article on Zalipye was published. And after the Second World War, the competition “Malevan Hut” began here: it is held today and collects ethnographers not only from Poland, but also from other countries. So painting on houses has become a real tradition: such colorful buildings can be found in neighboring villages.