We stayed on a site on the edge of Bratislava, conveniently
situated at the end of one of the many tram routes which meant that we were
able to catch an old but clean, fast and extremely cheap tram into the city
(about 75p for up to an hour’s travelling).
The city is rather different from others we had seen – no
big market square with elegant restored Burghers’ houses and no elaborate old
Town Hall. There is a scattering of fine
houses obviously dating from the beginning of the twentieth century – a time
when the whole of Eastern Europe seems to have blossomed with trade and wealth
–
and there is an old Town Hall but it is now a museum of
local history and even its outer walls seem to be part of the exhibits showing
architectural styles from different periods.
There is a castle (of course!) looking rather forbidding …
… perhaps appropriately as it was the venue for the
Bush-Putin summit of 1995!
The whole of
the old Jewish quarter with its fine Synagogue was demolished during the communist era to make
way for a drab housing estate. A replica of the Synagogue has been erected just across the river.
At the same time a new bridge with a restaurant high above it built over
the Danube.
There are, however, some amusing curiosities including the
narrowest house in Europe, just 130 cm wide …
… a bronze figure of a workman sticking out of a manhole …
… and the blue church.
But our favourite part of the Bratislava Museum is not in
the city at all but in the village of Devin a few kilometres away where the
ruined castle stands guard at the confluence of the Danube and the Morava
rivers.
There was a Celtic settlement here as long ago as 5000 BC
and the first castle was built by the Romans in the 1st century AD.
It was never successfully attacked until it was destroyed by
Napoleon’s forces in 1809.
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