The Bratislava Castle

Built on the Castle Hill it dominates the center of Bratislava and its four towers became a symbol of the city. Area of the Castle was inhabited from neolitic Hallstadt and Roman eras. First mentioned in 907. It reached its highest importance during the reign of Austro-Hungarian Queen Maria Theresa. In 1761-66 the fortress was rebuilt into a typical royal residence. More about the castle you can find in a Slovak-English publication Pribeh hradu / The Story of the Castle in Bratislava.

The Castle was destroyed by a fire in 1811. It was in ruins until 1950ties and then after reconstruction sheltered a historical part of the Slovak National Museum. The Castle was also a residence of the President of the Slovak Republic and the Slovak Parliament resides in a new building nearby. The last reconstruction of the castle was finished in 2011. There were new archaeological findings during the last reconstruction.

The Museum of History administers almost 250,000 objects from the field of national history, arts, sculpting, painting, culture, traditional and artistic crafts, numismatics, ethnography, warfare, economy, the history of Slovaks living abroad and cultures outside Europe. Some of these objects you can see at permanent or current exhibitions in the Bratislava Castle.

The appearance of the Bratislava Castle, to which visitors had been accustomed for decades, changed quite dramatically in 2009 due to the application of the so-called "broken white" colour. The Castle seems to have brightened up. But in fact, the Castle has only been restored to its original colour, since modern research techniques in combination with the study of historical resources revealed that the Castle had a white facade throughout the whole of its history.

Celtic Treasures Exposed

The first stage of the Bratislava castle reconstruction officially commenced in April 2008. Collection artefacts, museum exhibits and the organ from the Music hall were moved to protected substituted repositories. Archeological, architectonic and historical research was carried out at a number of places of the Castle Palace and the Castle grounds.

When archeological excavation started in the spring of 2009 as part of the works to uncover the foundations of the former baroque winter riding hall on the northern terrace of the Bratislava castle grounds, archeologists thought it would be a routine business. Secrets that the Castle had for so long been hiding from its numerous inhabitants were now revealed to historians and archeologists. They discovered a unique treasure here that experts called the "Golden Treasure of the Bratislava Castle".

Under several layers of soil, they found a set of 22 gold and silver coins that had been minted for a Celtic oppidum that once existed in the are of Bratislava.

In addition to the coins, fragment of glass vessel and a bronze signet, used by the Romans to seal official documents.

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