Festivals
Bratislava hosts a raft of excellent festivals, especially for music-lovers. Here are a few of the best:
Cultural Summer bkis.sk. Performance festival from June to September which floods Bratislava with theatre, opera, visual arts and dance.
Coronation Celebration bratislava-info.sk. Once a year (check website for current date and king) history-lovers don their codpieces and stockings to celebrate the coronation of a certain ruler.
Jazz Days bjd.sk. Brief but exuberant jazz festival which has been held every year since 1975. Typically held in October.
Bratislava Music Festival bhsfestival.sk. Classical music heavyweight organized by the Slovak Philharmonic every September and October, holding about 25 chamber and symphonic concerts each year.
Nový most
Road bridge Nový most (formerly Most SNP; New Bridge), nicknamed UFO because at one end there’s a building that looks like a flying saucer speared by a twig, represents a whimsical moment in Slovak communist functionalism. You can ascend the tower by elevator and dine at the restaurant, which looks like the Starship Enterprise, or gaze at Bratislava from the viewing deck – locals say it’s the best view of the city, because it doesn’t contain Nový most.
Old Town
You can enter the Old Town via the only surviving medieval gateway, Michalská brána a veža (St Michael’s Gate and Tower), which contains a military museum and a tower with a view. Michalská and Ventúrska, two halves of one street, are lined with stately Baroque palaces, the university library and dozens of places to eat. At number 10 is Mozart House, where the six-year-old Mozart performed for the Palffy clan, and at Michalská 1 is the former Hungarian parliament.
A little northeast are the adjoining squares of the Old Town – Hlavné námestie and Františkánske námestie. Hlavné, dotted with street cafés, hosts the Christmas and Easter markets, and a few stalls most weeks. On Františkánske, you’ll find the Rococo Mirbach Palace, home of the City Gallery’s Baroque collection.
Primate’s Palace
Neoclassical Primate’s Palace contains the Hall of Mirrors, where Napoleon and Austrian Emperor Franz I signed the Peace of Pressburg (as Bratislava was then called) in 1805. In 1903 city authorities restored the palace, and discovered six seventeenth-century English tapestries concealed behind the plaster, which are now the palace’s other main attraction.