Folk peasant houses

The traditional culture of Tihany, which dates back to the Middle Ages, was alive until the nineteen-fifties. The typical inhabitants of the village working at the properties of the fortress and the Abbey were poor people and this fact is expressed in their architecture. It was not unusual that several small peasant's houses were built on one single site. The houses were built without a chimney - the smoke exhausted from the central kitchen ("smoky kitchen") through the roof and the door until, in the 19th century, so-called freechimney kitchens were built. Next to the kitchen there was one room on the one side and a larder, a barn and a shed on the other side. The kitchen was heated by oven, the rooms by tile stove fired with coal. The walls were whitewashed wattled plaster or stone wall of basaltic tuff with characteristicgrey colour. The roof was thatched with reeds. The furniture was made of hardwood and served several generations. Some of the peasant houses with original furniture can be visited by the tourists (Parasztgazda house and Halászcéh house along Pisky walking way, Pottery house at the end of the Batthyány J. street) other are still occupied or serve other tourist purposes.