Being the centre Moravské Kopanice, a mountain-farming area of old times, the village of Starý Hrozenkov is seated into the national park and biospheric reserve of the White Carpathians (Bílé Karpaty.) Inhabited during the Walachian colonisation in the Middle Ages, the region is typical of scattered cottages and cabins with fruit gardens, tiny fields, pastures and orchid meadows. Starý Hrozenkov, the centre of the mountain-farming villages of Vyškovec, Vápenice and Žítková, has a turbulent historic record. Situated in a defile, it had been the first booty of nomadic Magyars, Tartars and Turks many times. But settlers kept returning to the repeatedly desolated area. Life has never been easy down here and surviving within the harsh nature is a challenge even today. The locals' would never give up living here and their reward is the wild beauty of the place they call home. Their traditional crops are barley, oat and potatoes and, of course, many fruit trees whose products are predestined to pass through a transubstantiation which yields the famous plum brandy in the end. Starý Hrozenkov has a cultural heritage, too: the latebaroque parochial church of the Virgin Mary built in 1774; the 1785 parish; the baroque statue of St John of Pomuk; and the l7th-century chapel near the pond. In 1950 the modern school building was added, a dominant of the area. Starý Hrozenkov becomes the stage of the local festival Kopaničářské slavnosti in which many folk music ensembles from both sides of the MoravianSlovakian borderline take part. The region is also typical of national costumes and folk habits. Following the split-up of Czechoslovakia, Starý Hrozenkov acquired a strategic role of one of the most important border crossings between the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This is why Starý Hrozenkov lives an era of explosive development now which will change its usual face.

The hay harvest

Spring in the mountains

A log cabin

The statue of John of Pomuk

The highlanders' national costumes

A popular local festival

Overall view of Starý Hrozenkov

Our Lady's Parochial Church