Visited in November of 2024. Something that is 300 years old and deliberately well-preserved always piques my interest, even if it has a reconstructed-for-museum-purposes feel. In any case, Hollókő is very photogenic and pleasant to walk through.

That old village core is literally just a few hundred meters long, with the homogenous nature of construction seen on every step. The signature sight is the town church, dedicated to St Martin, which sits at the fork of the only street in the village, splitting it into a main artery and an auxiliary loop. The door was locked, and I did not make extra efforts to find somebody to let me in.

In fact, of various tourist-catering establishments on the central stretch of the main street, most can be visited only between March and October. Just a couple stay open year-round. One is the "main" Village Museum, showcasing the traditional decorations, furniture, houseware, and tools; the other is Guzsalyas, the museum of traditional clothing. Both add a bit of historical context, so they are worth a look. (On a semi-related note, only one place was open for refreshments on that late-November morning - a pretty pastry shop called Kalácsos Pékség; several locals came in for their bread and pastry purchases while I had coffee and a fantastic local specialty whose name I did not record in its cozy dining room.)

The theme continued with craftsmen - only the leather workshop was operating on the day - but when I walked in, the proprietor was conducting a demo for a large group of teenagers on a school field trip. I was quite unceremoniously asked to come back later, which did not fit into my time constraints. Aside from those schoolchildren, I did not see any other visitors, which logically closes the loop on why the village goes into a partial shutdown in winter months.

I skipped the castle that towers above Hollókö (within the WH core zone if I read the map correctly); its reputedly well-restored spaces are likely not without interest, but I had to err on the side of leaving myself enough daylight for my other plans for the day.    

In the end, I spent a little under two hours in the little village, including my sit-down coffee and two museum visits, each of which took under 20 minutes. Given the extremely limited public bus schedule connecting Budapest with Hollókő, driving appears to be the best option. It is a bit over an hour's drive from the capital, so with the time required to get there and either back or to your next destination, allocating about four hours to the visit feels like the minimum.