[ May2016 ] At last we arrived at Cicmany, the village I wanted to visit. It took about 1 and a half hours by bus from Zilina, a middle size city in the central Slovakia. In Cicmany, there are wooden houses with dark walls with white patterns painted on all over them as you see in this photo.
When I saw the photos on the internet for the first time, I thought it might be that there were about 5 houses like this, but in fact, there were as many as 140 houses and it is spectacular. And it is not a museum village, but about 200 people live here. The patterns are flowers, animals or geometry patterns. Apparently these patterns were the embroidery patterns which housewives of each house made in the past. And they drew them on the wall as a charm against evil spirits. According to our guide book, 75% of the houses burned down at the beginning of the 20th century and in 1923 they reconstructed them as they had been. But in the past there were more houses like this. The village was so pretty but not touristy and there were not many people visiting here. The streets were very quiet.
