Visited October 2017.

Hollókő is a Palóc ethnographic village in the northern part of Hungary. It can be visited as a day trip from Budapest – there are two buses a day leaving from Stadion bus station (metro station: Puskas Ferenc Stadion). The mornig bus leaves at 08:30 and it takes two hours to get to the village which is hidden somewhere at the end of the road in one of Cserhat mountains valleys. Then you’ll have 5 hours and a half there, ‘cos the returning bus is at 4pm. You have plenty of time to see everything in the area – walk back and forth the two little streets, visit the church that was reconstructed in 1909 after the fire, visit all the museums in the village (village museum, dolls museum, post museum, weaving place, craft shops – for all of them you have to pay a minimal entry fee), follow the educational trail and learn about the local nature and local way of life, climb to the (partly reconstructed) 13th century castle for nice views, although the village itself cannot be clearly seen because of the forest that surrounds it (photo).

There is a new Tourist information centre at the entrance to the village, close to the parking lot, just behind the cemetery where you can get a map and some leaflets about Hollókő and activities and feasts in the area.

At the end of your tour you can have a local meal in one of the restaurants (there are at least three of them) – do not miss paloc soup!

Hollókő is much more prepared for tourists than Holašovice or Vlkolínec, also WHS in Czechia and Slovakia. I cannot even imagine spending four hours in Holašovice where almost everything is closed even during summer.

In my opinion the biggest value of Hollókő is that this village is a kind of an enclave of originally Altai/Turkish speaking people who appeared in northern Hungary in 13th-14th centuries and were able to keep their tradition and way of life for such a long time, although they forgot their mother language and partly assimilated (religion) to their new homeland. They created a kind of small architecture which is really unique.