Horná Lehota is situated at the altitude 640 m in the region called Horehronie, 5 km from the town Podbrezová. In the year 1406 it was mentioned as a village belonging to Ľupča lordship. Gold was mined here until the half of the 16. century.
At the beginning of the 20. century the migration from the village was very strong. Local domestic population was selling laces and wire products in Ungary and the Balkan peninsula in order to earn money for the living.
In the village there is a Roman-Catholic church built in the baroque style from the 17. century and a belfry with a wooden upper part from the year 1789. Below the belfry, there is a memorial devoted to a famous Slovak writer Samo Chalupka, who was born in 1812 in the local Evangelic parsonage. Samo Chalúpka, the author of a famous Slovak poem „Mor ho!“ was buried on the local cemetery. An Evangelic church from the year 1791 is very close to the place where he was born. From architectonical perspective, there is a very interesting building for mourning ceremonies in the centre of the village.
Close to Horná Lehota there is the largest archeological area of the Horehronie region called „Hrádok“. It comes from the Bronze Age and was declared a national cultural monument. It was an important trading centre, belonging to a group of fortified settlements in the Horehronie region.
