Podbiel is located in the Oravská Highlands at the confluence of the Orava River and Studený Brook. Created in the mid 16th century by the Valaska (shepherds’) colonisation, it was originally owned by the Oravský estate. The population engaged in agriculture, making homespun linen and shingles. Beside the furnace, whose remains are to be found by the road in the direction to Zuberec, the village once included two sawmills, a brewery and a mill. Its housing development is of a street type, with a triangular-shaped precinct around the church. The farmsteads comprise open common yards, with deeply set buildings. In the front yard two or even three houses are lined one after the other, each linked to the farm structures. The built-up plot is finished off with a perpendicularly-built barn. Log-type unplastered houses, with gable roofs covered with shingles stand on stone underpinnings. The structures, 56 of which have been declared national cultural monuments, date from the mid-19th and the early 20th centuries.

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