What are some interesting examples of cultural/vernacular landscape in your country or region?
In Slovenia, you can often stumble upon various small road-side structures of a religious nature while out and about - wayside shrines (known as znamenja - literally "signs" or "marks"). There are several different kinds. The biggest are also known as "kapelice" (singular: kapelica). These are small buildings that are generally enclosed on three sides and have a small chamber for a statue or a fresco, as well as some flowers and candles. In my part of the country, they are small square buildings like the one in this image that can comfortably fit one person but the ones I've seen in the eastern, Pannonian parts are much taller and can often fit more people. Generally, these shrines were built by people as a favour to the Virgin Mary or a particular saint as thanks for something.
The shrine in the first image is an example of a pretty standard-sized structure. But there are many shrines (kapelice) that are smaller. You will usually find these on forest paths and there's a bit of a blurry distinction between a small backroad kapelica and a general znamenje (although colloquially in my parts, we use znamenje interchargeably for both). These shrines retain the general shape but instead of being actual buildings, they are generally just a small structure with an opening where you can find a statue, a painting or a cross.
I forgot to mention in the first post; obviously, shrines are dedicated to a specific saint so they have a name, but they often also have an alternate colloquial name. I'm mainly talking about being named after whomever built the shrine (most commonly using a house name or the surname with newer shrines), but there's also more general names. For example, my village has two shrines close together and both have lesser-known names after their makers but colloquially, one is also called "the old shrine".
At the end of the spectrum, there are several kinds of znamenja. The bigger ones are small structures that have no room except maybe a small opening for a painting or a cross. Often, they are square structures with paintings on all four sides.
Do you have some kind of distinction between a smaller shrine (kapelica) and a small church (kapela)? In my observations, it seems like the central Slovene regions have churches and small shrines but in the eastern roadside villages, it's much more common to see small chapels.
This would be known as znamenje in Slovenia. I'm pretty sure the word originates in Latin.
The smallest kinds of marks usually come in the form of a wooden cross with a roof on top, and there will either be a statue of Jesus or a religious painting of a saint and a saying on it. Another form of marks are plague marks, which are most often stone columns.
You can spot another kind of structures out by the fields: hayracks. A hayrack is known in Slovene as kozolec. These have traditionally been used for drying grass although sadly, you can stumble upon hayracks in various stages of disrepair sometimes, or hayracks whose owners decided to use them for something new - putting up billboards. Still, considering that a lot of people are very proud of our hayracks, they are not going anywhere, and new ones are still being built, or old ones rebuilt. There are various kinds of kozolci. Especially in the east, it's popular for them to be doubled: such a kozolec is known as toplar, and people set up tables and benches underneath, or use them to park their tractors. These have a room on the top. There are also many other kinds of hayracks, each with their own names.
Another structure has to do with an important activity with a long history. Pictured here is the apiary of Anton Janša, the father of modern bee-keeping. The form of the apiary hasn't changed much throughout the years, save for modern roofing and of course, not every beekeeper's apiary is that big. Also, some prefer their apiaries on lorries so they can transport them to pasture. There is a rich tradition of apiary panel paintings, which you can also see in the pic. They're an important part of tradition and they feature many different kinds of motifs.
Oh, right. I played it for a bit but I don't remember seeing any shrines like in the OP pic, more like or . And also those old believers' stone shrines.
Nathaniel King
intredasting
Jaxon Flores
Are you sure it’s the same? A chapelle (fr)/chapel (en) is specifically a very small church, the smallest where you can worship I believe What op is posting is I believe a shrine which we don’t have a word for
Anthony Lopez
they are called "Wegkapelle", which means "chapel near the way"
looks like something Mexicans would do based madre de la muerte
Colton King
Our problem is that nobody knows how many there are and some places are hard to reach. There's an abandoned valley in my Canton full of similar structures. I was thinking about going there with tent and take some pictures, and maybe map all the valley if I have time
Oh, that sounds cool, do post about it if you do. Generally, we seem to have things covered pretty well but I've noticed personally that one of the forest shrines from my area is missing from the registry. Here's another interesting website, this one collects vernacular names, but sadly only for four Slovene (and eight Carinthian) municipalities: maps.flurnamen.at/
interesting. I'll surely do a thread about it when I go. I know there's the path of "transumanza" (taking cows to alpine pasture) where there are homes built by farmers to rest during the journey. I heard some are still decent enough to sleep in it. I'm fascinated by that valley because all the people that moved there died, so they started to think it was a cursed place and abandoned it. Hope its not cursed for real kek
some towns here still have these small stone towers which they used to lockup drunk people back in the old days. A lot of them got converted or demolished though
Thanks! I found fascinating how they were able to survive in such harsh conditions. I've built a few dry stone walls and it's very fatiguing. In the mountains there are kilometres of stairs and walls built like that, an impressive effort.
Colton Butler
Literally nothing. Everything good about this place was because of the Brits.
