These articles were published in the Spectacular Slovakia travel guide, published annually by The Slovak Spectator since 1996. The latest editions can be obtained from our online shop.

Podolie: Southern Trenčín Region

By James Thomson

In the south of Trenčín Region the Váh valley broadens out into a fertile plain, dotted with farming villages. One of them, Podolie, hosts more than twenty scale-models of the castles of the great Matúš Čák, the lord of Trenčín castle, in a miniature theme park called Matúš' Kingdom. The models are impressively detailed, and present the castles as they would have looked when they were in use; alongside are information boards showing each castle's location and a photograph of its present, invariably ruined, appearance. The astonishing breadth of Čák's property empire is revealed, though several of the models seem to be works-in-progress and their setting is somewhat lacking in imagination, plonked in the middle of a grassy playing field.

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