Culture

OK, so it's not exactly a mecca of high culture, but Zakopane is home to a rich folk culture, and the centre of a proud Polish highlander tradition. Apart from all the thigh-slapping dancers, this is most clearly noticed in the colourful and highly decorative folk costumes, the ever-present goralska muzyka (Highland music) and the distinctive Zakopane mountain architectural style, pioneered by Stanislaw Witkiewicz, and often referred to as the "Zakopane" style. Zakopane has also become a favourite with painters and sculptors, many of whom are graduates of the Zakopane Academy of Fine Art.

The first building ever erected in the Zakopane style was the Villa "Koliba." Designed by Stanislaw Witkiewicz and built between 1892 and 1894, it stands to this day on Koscieliska Street in Zakopane. Witkiewicz once wrote on the idea of the Zakopane style - "The idea was not to build yet one more beautiful, typical house. The focus was something else entirely: to build a home which would settle all existing doubts about the possibility of adapting folk architecture to the requirements deriving from the more complex and sophisticated needs of comfort and beauty. To design a home that would inherently withstand all common grievances and undermine all customary prejudices. To erect a house that would prove that one can have a home, a dwelling in the dominant style of Zakopane and yet be confident that this home will not disintegrate, that it will effectively protect one from storms, gales and the cold, that it will possess the full range of comforts yet simultaneously be beautiful in a fundamentally Polish way."