The secret of Pustevny

Rysík found out

“Not at once - Pustevny grew house by house for nearly half a century. Something of the very first tourist chalet is supposed to be left. Where is it?”

Pustevny lies in the saddle between Radhošť and Tanečnice at around 1,100 m a.s.l. It takes its name from the hermits who lived here until the end of the 18th century. The saddle became a walkers' settlement in 1886, when Pohorská jednota Radhošť bought the plot called Krabičanek here from Apolena Malinová, the fojtka - a hereditary village head.

Within five years a single-storey house with sixteen beds and a taproom went up on it - a shelter called Pústevňa. In 1894 the stone Šumná joined it, probably the oldest tourist chalet still standing in the Beskids, and two buildings by Jurkovič followed at the turn of the century. Pústevňa, the very first tourist chalet, is something you would look for here in vain today.

Unlocked by a visit to Pustevny, confirmed since .

Rysík found out

“Wow! I came to see the most famous building and found the very first tourist chalet, Pústevňa, inside it. Libušín swallowed it up as its left wing. Later a right wing was added - Parma's extension - and that made the building I am looking at now. And behind all of it stood one single association, whose name I can still read on the front.”

The Pústevňa of 1891 never disappeared. When Pohorská jednota Radhošť built on the same spot again eight years later, the first shelter was absorbed into the new building as its left wing. The oldest walls at Pustevny therefore lie hidden inside the most famous house here.

The new Libušín was designed by the young Dušan Jurkovič as a dining hall for neighbouring Maměnka, where guests slept. The house later grew by a right wing, Parma's extension. The interior was painted by Karel Štapfer to designs by Mikoláš Aleš. In 2014 much of the building burned down; a scientific reconstruction returned it to its 1925 form, and in July 2020 it reopened - complete with the Pohorská jednota Radhošť inscription on the front.

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Rysík found out

“The client was the Pohorská jednota again. It entrusted the young Jurkovič with two houses at once.”

In the late 1890s the association commissioned two buildings at once from the young Dušan Jurkovič. Maměnka was for sleeping, neighbouring Libušín for eating. Both opened on 6 August 1899.

At the end of the Second World War the lodges were used to billet troops, fell into disrepair and demolition was considered - the association could not afford the repairs. In the mid-1980s Maměnka was closed as unsafe and stood out of use for eighteen years. It took guests again from 2003, a hundred and four years after it opened.

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Rysík found out

“They do - only it is man-made. The association dug this lake by hand.”

One thing bothered the association's members: the Beskids were the only mountains without a tarn. So in 1894 they made one themselves. They picked an older wetland in a hollow below the ridge, cleared it and deepened it. The name they then borrowed from lakes gouged out by glaciers and volcanoes.

The artificially dug attraction is now a protected pool, which, because of the newts, may not be approached beyond the railing.

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Rysík found out

“It does not. Cyrilka stood at the end of a strip of land the association was buying up piece by piece. Their plan was far bigger.”

The pavilion does not stand on the ridge by chance. The spot is called Stupně, and it is the end - this is as far as the strip of land the association bought up year after year from Tanečnice reached. It is named after the first of the two missionaries; its sister Metodějka on Okrouhlé did not outlast the century.

The Cyrilka pavilion was built fourteen years before the association owned the whole ridge - making it the oldest surviving Pohorská jednota Radhošť building on the ridge.

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Rysík found out

“Wow! The association I ran into at the very first stop has been with me the whole way - and it is behind this statue too. Albín Polášek gave it to the Pohorská jednota Radhošť.”

Radegast was given to the association by Albín Polášek, born in Frenštát, a professor at the Art Institute in Chicago. In 1930 he had it brought up to the ridge at his own expense - besides a lorry, a team of ten horses helped.

The day before the unveiling, on 4 July 1931, a hailstorm broke over the ridge. Lightning struck and killed the twenty-two-year-old private Karel Than, who was standing guard by the statue. The next day it cleared and the statue was unveiled. The one in front of you is a hard-wearing granite replica from 1998. The original in artificial stone can be seen in the foyer of the Frenštát town hall. It was moved there after lightning and mountain weather had damaged it on the ridge.

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