Hollókő, a small village of around 330 people in northern Hungary, becomes the centre of attention every spring during Easter time. The annual Easter Festival has been held there for over 20 years. However, the village was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987, for their ‘Old Village’, an area consisting of 56 residential buildings built in early modern folk architecture style in the late 17th century, and kept intact since the early 20th century.

The village in the heart of Palóc Land is also known for keeping all the old Hungarian Easter traditions.

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Perhaps the best known one of them all is the so-called ‘locsolkodás’ (Śmigus-dyngus), when the local women get water poured on them by the men. In modern times, the water pouring has been replaced by spraying cologne—however, not in Hollókő, where the ladies of the the village still get bucketfuls of water dunked on them, as per the old tradition. You can take part in this practice at the Easter Festival: a total of five ‘locsolkodás’ sessions are scheduled across two days. Two are on Sunday, 31 March, and three are set to be held on Easter Monday, 1 April (which happens to coincide with April Fool’s Day this time around).

Egg colouring, a holiday tradition popular all around the world, not just in Hungary, will be taking place on Good Friday at the festival, the only free admission day of the four.

A lesser-known Easter time practice is ‘kereplőzés’ (‘rattling’). As per Hungarian tradition, the church bells are ‘going to Rome’ on Holy Thursday, and do not start chiming again until the evening of Holy Saturday. Local villagers take on the role of the chiming church bells in the interim, by rattling their wooden folk instruments known as ‘ratchets’. You can see a demonstration of this tradition on Saturday morning at the festival.

Also, there are professional folk music and dance groups slated to perform at the four-day event series.

On Good Friday evening, the Hungarian medieval music band Keleti Szél (Orient Wind) is taking the stage. On Easter Sunday, the biggest musical act on the event's marquee, the gypsy folk band Parno Graszt is giving a live performance in the afternoon, which is followed by the Easter Ball at the Hollóköves Café featuring DŰVŐ and the Nógrád Folk Dance Group in the evening.

According to the festival’s website, the Hollókő Easter Festival has been held for over 20 years. However, the earliest mentions of it in national online media are from 2015, which is also the date denoted on the copyright notice on the bottom of the page (despite the website’s domain name being registered in 2023). This may be because the event gained a significant level of popularity in the last nine years.

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