Architectural Pearls of Slovakia

By: Lucia Tarbajovská, Slovak Radio

---

I would like to introduce our country through the stranger´s eyes. Mr.Steve Heighes is native Londoner, who decided to live and work in Slovakia. He naturally spent some time travelling around the country and here is what he´s seen .

If a country's psychology can be judged by its architecture, then I would have to diagnose Slovakia as a serious case of schizophrenia. While small towns and villages require no treatment, urban areas and cities need some deep therapy. To be honest, Bratislava is a hopeless case and no form of medication is likely to help. The "Doctor Jekyll" side of its character, the old town, has shrunk into nothing compared to its "Mr. Hyde" persona, represented by Petrzalka and the industrial and commercial zones. It has to be said that Kosice is a much better patient, with its personality divided more or less 50/50 between beautiful and terribly ugly. The town centre is a pleasure to see, with styles of architecture spanning over 400 years and several very attractive buildings. Take a ten-minute bus journey to the Biely Dom, and you are in architectural hell, concrete blocks everywhere, and not all of them can be blamed on the communists. Smaller towns, like Bardejov, designated as a site of world cultural heritage because of its beautiful buildings, don't get a perfect bill of health either. Walk away from the main square and you find that the town has been invaded by strange steel snails, which closer investigation shows are used for parking cars in. Probably the clearest indication of building schizophrenia comes with churches. Slovakia has a fine collection of of old churches, spread all across the country from East to West, showing many different varieties of style. Then there are the modern churches. It is a theory of mine that central European religious architects today are actually in the pay of the devil, but I could be wrong. Besides the split personality, Slovak architecture exhibits all the signs of identity crisis as well. While there are styles which can clearly be identified as being Slovak, wherever you go your eye will fall on all kinds of different designs : Hungarian, Austrian, German, French, Russian Communist chic, the list is almos t endless, although I haven't seen many English cottages ! The result isn't at all bad, and is actually rather fascinating. There are one or two motifs which are almost unique to Slovakia...upside down pyramids ; Bratislava has one and so does Kosice. I'd be interested if listeners could tell me the location of any others, and bridges which don't seem to have any logical purpose at all, of which I've seen several. Overall, Slovakia remains a largely beautiful country despite some big architectural mistakes. However, if the whole country is to escape the fate of the capital city, then some serious thought has to be put into creating planning laws to make sure that the buildings of the future are as good as or better than those of Slovakia's pre-war history.