Bratislava, Slovakia

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Bratislava (German Pressburg, Hungarian Pozsony), capital of Slovakia, lies in the extreme southwestern part of the country, along the Danube where that river has cut a gorge in the Lower Carpathian Mountains near the meeting point of the frontiers of Slovakia, Austria, and Hungary.

Archaeological evidence suggests prehistoric habitation of the site, which was later fortified and settled by the Celts and Romans and finally in the 8th C was inhabited by the Slavs. The community developed as a trade centre and was granted the rights of a free royal town in 1291. The first university in what was then Hungary, the Istropolitana Academy, was founded there in 1467. Bratislava served as the Hungarian capital from 1526 until 1784, when most of the middle Danube basin was in the hands of the Turks, and the Hungarian parliament continued to meet here until 1848. The Habsburg rulers were crowned kings of Hungary in the city's Gothic Cathedral of St Martin.

The city is dominated by its enormous castle, which stands on a plateau 300 feet (100 m) above the Danube. The castle was the residence of the Austrian royal family until it was destroyed by fire in 1811; it has since been largely restored. In 1741, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria fled to Bratislava when Vienna was threatened by French and Bavarian troops. The so-called Peace of Pressburg (1805) was signed by Napoleon and the Austrian emperor Francis I, after the Battle of Austerlitz, in the city's Baroque Archbishop's Palace. Following World War I, Bratislava was made the capital of Slovakia in the first Czechoslovakian Republic, and it remained the capital when Slovakia emerged as an independent nation in 1993.

The modern city of Bratislava is a cultural centre and the seat of Comenius University (1919; successor to the medieval Istropolitana Academy), the Slovak Academy of Sciences (1953), several specialized schools and technical institutes, the Slovak National Theatre, and the Slovak National Gallery and Museum. An important road and rail junction and river port, Bratislava has diversified industries producing textiles, chemicals, and metal and electrical goods.

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