Original Meadow - Pasture Sites of Slovakia

This is another strange tentative site of Slovakia with no chance to be inscribed. The nomination text is very confusing and three parts of traditional economy based on agriculture and natural resources are mentioned there: (i) grassland culture with meadows, (ii) vinicultural landscape with vineyards, and (iii) mining landscapes for production of silver, gold and the opal precious stone. Seemingly, only one part is the target of this nomination - the original meadows of Slovakia. The part of vineyards is nominated separately as Slovak Tokai region, and one mining landscape of Slovakia has been already inscribed as Banská Štiavnica WHS.

As concerns the original pastures, it includes quite large area of traditional countryside landscape of Slovakia – in total 9 components located in various mountainous regions of Slovak Carpathians. I visited at least 5 regions of the nomination many times – (i) Horehronie region around Helpa and Telgart villages, (ii) Turiec region around Blatnica village, (iii) Orava region around Zuberec, Zazriva and Terchova villages, (iv) Podpolianie region around extinct Poliana stratovolcano protected landscape, and (v) Zamagurie region located to the East from Tatra Mountains close to the border with Poland.

But I visited the countryside not far to the rest of nominated sites during my trips to Slovakia. The reason of my visits was never the villages surrounded by the pastures in the valleys but always the mountains above them. Thus, I have almost no representative photo of this TWHS in my archives…

PHOTO – it is …