Slovakia

Slovakia lies right in the heart of Europe. It´s a country of natural and cultural treasures, is offering a visit to museums, galleries, castles, chateaux, memorials and national cultural sights, national parks and protected landscape regions. It has a lot of objects belonging to the national heritage and it means that Slovakia is a very rich country in history.

The largest town of the country and at the same time its capital is Bratislava. The most important monuments in this town is Bratislava Castle and Devín Castle. There is also a St. Martin´s Cathedral, which is situated below Bratislava Castle.

Foreign turists usualy visit the most famous museums (Bratislava, Banská Bystrica), galleries (Bratislava, Martin), castles (Bojnice, Trenčín), churches (Šaštín, Martin), memorial houses of famous persons (D. Kubín, Modra) and chateux (Antol, Topoľčianky).

Slovakia is rich in naturals beauties as well, so this coutnry attracts many tourists in every season of the year. The turists who are interested in sports visit our sport centres mainly in the highest mountains of our country – the High Tatra and the Low Tatra, where they can see a lot of lakes among the largest and the deepest of them is Great Hinca Mountain Lake. The highest peak of Slovakia is Peak of Gerlach. Slovakia is largely a mountainous country, but there are three plains: Záhorská Plain, Sub-Danube Plain and Eastern Slovakia Plain.

The biggest river is the river Danube and the longest one is the river Váh.

There are the well-known river dams, too: Orava Water Dam, Zemplin Dam, Liptov Dam and Big Domaša Dam.

Among a lot of caves in Slovakia the most visited are Demäňovská Ice Cave, Dobšiná Ice Cave and Demäňovská Cave of Freedom.

There are several national parks and protected regions in Slovakia such as the High Tatra, the Low Tatra, the Little Fatra, the Giant Fatra, the Muráň Plain, Poloniny, the Upper Orava, Kysuca, Poľana, the Nitra Valley, the Štiavnica Hills, the Slovak Paradise and the Slovak Karst. The Slovak Paradise and the Slovak Karst belong among the truly rare regions in central Europe.

Some turists come to Slovakia to heal their diseases and illnesses (Slovakia has a lot of mineral and termal springs) to our world famous spa – Piešťany, Trenčianske Teplice, Rajecké Teplice, Bardejov etc.

We have a lot of unusual beauties and memorials which we can be really proud for

as for example our largest castle (and the same time the oldest one of central Europe) – Spiš Castle with Spiš Chapter, which are both suggested for the UNESCO list of world heritage as well as village – folk architecture reserve – Vlkolínec and Banská Štiavnica (town reserve). There are some more very special places where to go in Slovakia. Among all I can recommend a typical Slovak villages as Čičmany, Važec, Terchová, Ždiar, Museum of Slovak Village (open air museum) and National Cemetary both in town Martin.

Slovakia as an independent country is like a child (from 1993) – very young in fact, but it has its roots in a long history, what we can see wherever we go.

A lot of famous people such as Milan Rastislav Štefánik or Andy Warhol came from Slovakia and became world-famous. And they are our great national heritage and we should be proud of them and proud of our whole country, too.