Monday, 10 September 2012

BRATISLAVA


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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