• Bratislava
• East Slovakia
• Mountain regionsBRATISLAVA
BRATISLAVA has two distinct sides: the old quarter is an attractive
slice of Habsburg Baroque, while the rest of the city has the brash and
butchered feel of the average East European metropolis. More buildings
have been destroyed here since the war than were bombed out during it,
the whole Jewish quarter having been bulldozed to make way for a
colossal suspension bridge and highway. Yet, even though the
multicultural atmosphere of the prewar days has gone, there is a certain
Central European cosmopolitanism here, at the meeting of three nations -
boosted by a thriving café culture.
The City
Trams from the main train station offload their shoppers and sightseers
behind the Hotel Fórum in Obchodná - literally Shop Street - which
descends into Hurbanovo námestie, a busy junction on the northern edge
of the old town (staré mesto). Here you'll find the hefty mass of the
Kostol trinitárov , one of the city's finest churches, its exuberant
trompe l'oeil frescoes creating a magnificent false cupola.
Opposite the church, a footbridge passes under a tower of the city's
last remaining double gateway. Below is a small section of what used to
be the city moat, now a garden belonging to the Baroque apothecary
called U cerveného raka , on your left between the towers, which now
houses a Pharmaceutical Museum (Farmaceutická expozícia; Tues-Fri
10am-5pm, Sat & Sun 11am-6pm), displaying everything from seventeenth-century
drug grinders to reconstructed period pharmacies. The second and taller
of the towers is the Michalská brána (Mon & Wed-Sun 10am-5pm), an
evocative and impressive entrance to the old town and now a weapons
museum; the rooftop view from the top of the tower is superb.
Michalská and Ventúrska, which run into each other, have both been
beautifully restored and are lined with some of Bratislava's finest
Baroque palaces. There are usually plenty of students milling about
amongst the shoppers, as the main university library is on this
thoroughfare. The palaces of the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy continue
into Panská, starting with the Pálffy Palace , at Panská 19, today an
art gallery (Tues-Sun 10am-5/6pm), housing a patchy collection of Slovak
paintings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
A little northeast of here are the adjoining main squares of the old
town - Hlavné námestie and Frantiskánske námestie - on the east side of
which is the Old Town Hall (Stará radnica; Tues-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat & Sun
11am-6pm), a lively hotchpotch of Gothic, Renaissance and nineteenth-century
styles containing the Municipal Museum - worth visiting if only for the
medieval torture exhibition in the basement dungeons. The Counter-Reformation,
which gripped the parts of Hungary not under Turkish occupation, issues
forth from the square's Jesuit Church (Jezuitsky kostol), whose best
feature is its richly gilded pulpit. Diagonally opposite is the Mirbach
Palace (Tues-Sun 10am-5pm), arguably the finest of Bratislava's Rococo
buildings, preserving much of its original stucco decor.
Round the back of the Old Town Hall, with the stillness of a provincial
Italian piazza during siesta, is the Primaciálne námestie , dominated by
the Neoclassical Primate's Palace (Tues-Sun 10am-5pm), whose pediment
frieze is topped by a cast-iron cardinal's hat. The palace's main claim
to fame is its Hall of Mirrors, where Napoleon and the Austrian emperor
signed the Peace of Pressburg (as Bratislava was then called) in 1805.
You can now visit this, and several other rooms hung with portraits of
the Habsburgs and seventeenth-century English tapestries, found by
chance during the building's renovation.
Despite its proximity to Vienna and Budapest, the city has produced only
one composer of note, Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837). The composer's
birthplace, a cute apricot-coloured cottage hidden away behind two
fashionable shops on Klobucnícka, is now a museum (Tues-Sun 11am-5pm).
Beyond, at the top end of Stúrova, is Kamenné námestie , overlooked by a
giant Tesco supermarket, in front of which the whole city seems to wind
up after work, to grab a beer or takeaway from one of the many stand-up
stalls, then jabber away the early evening before catching the bus or
tram home.
EAST SLOVAKIA
Stretching from the High Tatras east to the Ukrainian border, the
landscape of East Slovakia is decidedly different from the rest of the
country. Ethnically, this is probably the most diverse region in the
country, with different groups coexisting even within a single valley.
The majority of the country's Romanies live here, mostly on the edge of
Slovak villages, in shanty towns of almost medieval squalor. In the
ribbon-villages of the north and east, the Rusyn minority struggle to
preserve their culture and religion, while along the southern border
there are large numbers of Hungarians. After spending time in the rural
backwaters, Kosice , Slovakia's second largest city, can be a welcome
though somewhat startling return to city life. Gradually realizing its
potential as a diverse and vibrant cosmopolitan centre, it certainly
contains enough of interest for at least a day's stopover.
MOUNTAIN REGIONS
The great virtue of Slovakia is its mountains, particularly the High
Tatras , which, in their short span, reach alpine heights and have a
bleak, stunning beauty. By far the republic's most popular destination,
they are, in fact, the least typical of Slovakia's mountains, which are
predominantly densely forested, round-topped limestone ranges. In the
heart of the mountains is Banská Bystrica , one of the many towns in the
region originally settled by German miners, and still redolent of those
times. Generally, though, the towns in the valley bottoms have been
fairly solidly industrialized, and are only good as bases for exploring
the surrounding countryside. Railways, where they do exist, make for
some of the most scenic train journeys in the country. |
