The Venus of Moravany

The Venus of Moravany nad Váhom is a realistically rendered, headless and armless Venus figurine. It measures 7.5 cm in height and is carved from mammoth ivory.

It was dug up by a farmer in a field near Moravany nad Váhom in a location called Podkovica, sometime around the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. He considered it to be some kind of a children's toy, so it was sold at a ridiculous price. Eventually, the Venus figurine made it back to Slovakia through Czechia, Germany and France.

As only the area of ​​the find is known, but not the specific site, so the contextual data are not available, dating is problematic. But the Venus clearly dates from the Gravettian period and its age is estimated at 23 to 25 thousand years.

It is permanently exhibited in the Ponitrianské Museum in Nitra. However, taking photographs is not allowed there, and if you go to see it, a museum employee will go with you to supervise. Something like this is quite uncommon. For example, in the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, both Venuses of Willendorf and Galgenberg are on display, always surrounded by visitors taking photos.

A similarly "unconventional" approach is also evident at the location of the find itself. There is no mention of the Venus anywhere, but there are rather amateurish Stations of the Cross by a nearby road.

Moravany nad Váhom is situated a few kilometres from spa town of Piešťany. The Podkovica locality is situated to the east of the village itself. The starting point is a car park at the Striebornica dam, and Pokovica is a slope above the left bank of the Striebornica stream.