THE HIŽE MAZANKE ROUTE – 131

The municipality of Kumrovec is located in the western part of Krapina-Zagorje County and lies by the left embankment of the river Sutla, which is also the border with the Republic of Slovenia. One of the main attractions of Kumrovec is the Ethnological Museum of the Old Village of Kumrovec, a unique open-air museum with well-preserved original turn-of-the-century village houses. When residential and commercial buildings were being constructed, the oak was of exceptional importance as a building material. This is how the so-called “hiže mazanke” (mud-coated houses) were built, houses with the wooden-beam construction smeared with mud and painted with blue vitriol, whose roofs were covered with rye straw, biber roof tiles, or grooved concrete tiles. Families wealthy enough to afford construction with quarried stone built masonry houses, pleasant to live in. The goal of the cycling route “Hiže mazanke” is to acquaint cyclists with the traditional construction not only of the said houses but also structures for domestic animals.