Put on the right shoes and join us on a stroll through centuries. The Kluknava Footwear Museum will direct your steps into the past. You will learn how bread used to be made back in time in the Water Mill in Kováčová. The Vintage Car Museum in Michalovce will offer you a glimpse under the bonnet of four-wheeled legends. At the end of your trip to non-traditional museums, you will visit the adventurous 17th century manor house in Borša.
Museum of Footwear in Kluknava.
What miles and distances have the lives of the Museum shoes tracked? Where have they gone? What have they walked through? The only museum of footwear in Slovakia has retraced the footsteps of the prehistoric shoemaking past and presents the traces recorded in the shoes of history up to the present day. The Museum exhibits replicas of shoes from both the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. You will also find a hall of personalities with portraits and shoes of famous athletes, actors, singers, and scientists.
Perhaps the oldest shoe find that archaeologists have come across in the Forest Cave in Oregon, which is 10,500 years old, can be seen today in Kluknava. You will also find metal sabatons, which were part of the knights’ armour, on display here. There are also typical folk shoes, such as Slovak krpce (peasant’s shoes), Dutch clogs, or Lapponian reindeer-skin boots.
The non-traditional Museum is located in a listed building from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, where the administrators of the Csáky estate from the local manor lived. After the formation of Czechoslovakia, the building housed a shoemaker’s workshop. The shoemaking industry was associated with Kluknava until the 1990s, when shoe tops were still being made for shoemaking factories in Zlín in a local associated manufacturing plant. The Kluknava Cottage is also part of the collections, which brings closer the room and the shoemaker’s workshop with period tools, shoes. and mannequins in historical folk garments.
Water Mill in Kováčová.
Wheels – big wheels, but also small ones have become controlled by technology and that is why today the privilege of becoming, at least for a while, the miller of the ‘Iron Count’ is waiting right for you. Treat yourself to an interesting tour of the water mill, which originally belonged to the Andrássy family from Krásna Hôrka. Here you will learn about the tradition of milling in the Gemer Region and the functioning of the ecological water energy used by our ancestors.
The building consists of 4 floors with original machinery, a mill wheel, and its wooden trough feeding the mill. During the tour, you will learn how flour was once made and hear the story of the miller and his family who were the last to live and work here.
The tour includes an exhibition of utilitarian objects and folk art, such as pottery, ceramics, wicker products, and embroidery from this area of the Gemer Region, and you will get one more cog in your information system about life in the past.
Non-traditional Museums in the Zemplín Region
Vintage Cars Museum
If one extra wheel is not enough for you, transfer to four-wheeled vintage cars in the heart of the Zemplín Region, in Michalovce. The Museum, unrivalled in its vintage character, awaits you here, a strong tourist attraction in the form of presenting historic automobiles and motorcycles, where it is a stunning experience to see beautifully restored vintage vehicles.
The non-traditional Museum near the Hungarian border offers a touch of the era in which these vehicles were at their peak. Not only does it serve to showcase the technical history of the region and the region, but it also provides visitors with a host of attractive activities. For example, the opportunity for modellers and vintage car enthusiasts to meet, share their interests, and show their art to the public. In addition, there are outdoor facilities, including a canopy. They are also used for various events and activities, including the Zemplín Vintage Vehicles Rallye.
Manor House in Borša
The time has come to travel to a site where the past is still flowing. The village of Borša and the pearl of its Renaissance architecture shine on the route map. The manor house of Francis the Il Rákóczi, which offers what other museums do not offer. One of the most precious historical findings is the fact that the future leader of the last anti-Habsburg uprising, after whom the manor is named, was born on 27 March 1676 in this manor house.
Here you may see furnished memorial rooms, which seem to have been cut out of a bygone era. The local exhibitions present his life and work, the history of the Rákóczi family, and the history of the manor itself. The manor house was characterised by a number of Renaissance decorated windows. These windows as well as the doors have been preserved to this day. So, take a look out of them! Step through the door through which Rákóczi so significantly stepped into our history and get right into the first act – the time of the duke’s birth.
