Origins of Bratislava

Bratislava, today the capital of Slovakia, stands on the Danube near the borders of Austria and Hungary. People have lived in the area since prehistoric times, and the Celts and the Romans had settlements there, the Romans maintaining a frontier along the river. The town is mentioned in written sources in connection with a battle between the Bavarians and the Hungarians in the early tenth century. For centuries it was known by its German name Pressburg, and from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century it was the coronation city of the kings of Hungary. Its castle overlooks the river, and its multiethnic population of Slovaks, Hungarians, Germans and Jews shaped its character before the twentieth century.

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