The story of Bratislava Castle

In 1052, so a Hungarian tradition goes, Henry III tried to seize this castle, and a soldier named Zotmund swam out to the invading fleet, drilled holes in the ships and sent them to the bottom. It is one of many legends tied to the rocky hill you are standing on, right above the Danube. People lived up here long before any castle: around 3500 BC the Boleráz culture built a fortified settlement on the hill, and later Celts and Romans left their traces too.

Under King Stephen I it became one of the central castles of the Kingdom of Hungary. Today the massive rectangular building has four corner towers and a courtyard with a well 80 metres deep. Find the tallest, the Crown Tower on the southwest corner.

It is 47 metres high, dates from the 13th century, and for about two hundred years from the mid-1500s it guarded the crown jewels of Hungary. Inside, the Slovak National Museum shows the prehistoric statue called the Venus of Moravany.