What started as a tradition in preparation for religious festivals more than a century ago has flourished (see what we did there) into a beautiful floral tradition for Zalipie, a small Polish village that’s about and hour and half drive by car from Poland’s second-largest city, Krakow.
The tradition is thought that have started more than a hundred years ago back when all of the cottages in the village used a stove or open fire as a source of heat and ventilation inside the homes was poor leading to soot marks on both the walls and ceilings. The problem arose when the women would begin whitewashing the walls in preparation for the religious festivals only to find that the soot marks would still show, at least that was until one creative person came up with the idea of using floral patterns in order to hide the unsightly marks, an idea that soon caught on.
However it’s not just residential homes that the floral patterns are limited to as soon they spread on to barns, bridges, churches and more turning the village of Zalipie into a beautiful flower-themed town. Thanks to modern technologies and heating however the technique is no longer needed to keep a clean and tidy home and yet the tradition remains.
There’s even a competition that was introduced by the government in 1948 in order to boost moral and help Poland heal after the trauma of World War II. It’s a beautiful tradition that shows no signs of slowing down and we hope it continues for years to come.
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