Travel guide
Featured on September 20, 2026
Slovak Republic
Slovakia's Kremnica Mint has struck coins since 1328.
Places
Walk from St. Martin's Cathedral, where Hungarian rulers were once crowned, through the tight old centre to the Danube embankment and up to the castle. The pleasure here is how quickly one city holds several lives at once: Habsburg streets, river paths, markets, and blunt postwar districts a tram ride away.
Tip: Give it a full day and stay the night; the centre loosens up after office hours and the riverfront is better in the evening.
Go for glacial lakes, sharp weather, and the easy joy of moving between trailheads on the Tatra Electric Railway. Even a short day can mean a funicular ride from Starý Smokovec to Hrebienok and a proper mountain walk without needing a car.
Tip: Best from late June to September for hiking; some high trails close outside summer and storms often build after lunch.
This long hilltop ruin spreads across a limestone ridge above the Spiš plain, and its scale makes medieval power feel physical rather than abstract. You walk walls, courtyards and empty spaces big enough to imagine the whole machinery of a frontier stronghold.
Tip: Give it half a day; the hill is exposed, so go early in summer and carry water.
Come for the sloping square, the mine history under your feet, and the reservoirs known as tajchy in the hills above town. It is one of those rare places where the old economy still shapes the walk: shafts, waterworks, town houses and church towers all belonging to the same story.
Tip: Stay overnight if you can; weekdays are quieter, and the square is at its best after day-trippers leave.
Walk Hlavná ulica from St. Elisabeth Cathedral to the singing fountain, then slip into courtyards and old barracks turned into cafés and galleries. It gives you the east in city form: less polished than the capital, more spacious, and very easy to like.
Tip: Give it an evening as well as a morning; the main street fills after work and the courtyards make more sense once people spill into them.
Eat
Small potato dumplings are tossed with bryndza, a tangy sheep cheese, and usually finished with fried bacon.
Where: At salaš restaurants in Liptov, Orava and under the Tatras, often after a hike.
This sour cabbage soup is usually cooked with smoked sausage, dried mushrooms and paprika, with some family versions adding prunes or cream.
Where: At the Christmas Eve family table, and from winter market stalls in paper bowls.
Thin potato flatbreads are cooked on a dry plate, then brushed with goose fat or filled with poppy seed, walnuts or jam.
Where: With roast goose in western Slovakia, especially around Slovak Grob, and at autumn wine-cellar evenings.
Sweet yeasted dough is wrapped around a roller, baked over heat and coated with sugar and chopped nuts.
Where: In bakeries around Skalica and at fairs in the west, where locals insist this is the real article.
Story
Bratislava works best at walking pace: one minute you are under St. Martin's spire, the next beside the Danube with cyclists and cold river wind. In Banská Štiavnica the air smells of damp stone and coffee, and by evening people drift back to the sloping square as if the whole town kept the same appointment. Then a train north pulls the country open: spruce forest, little stations, and the Tatras suddenly filling the end of the valley.
Before there was a modern republic, there was Great Moravia, with Nitra among its strongholds. In 863 Cyril and Methodius arrived with Slavonic books and liturgy. Centuries later these lands sat inside the Kingdom of Hungary, and when the Ottomans took Buda in 1541 the crown moved west to Pressburg. In 1741 Maria Theresa was crowned in St. Martin's Cathedral and rode up to Coronation Hill, while mining towns inland paid for much of the stone and ceremony.
In 1843, at the parsonage in Hlboké, Ľudovít Štúr met Jozef Miloslav Hurban and Michal Miloslav Hodža and fixed a standard Slovak based on central dialects. It sounds like grammar. It was politics. A language fit for newspapers, schools and speeches gave a people ruled from elsewhere a sharper public voice, and when Austria-Hungary collapsed in 1918 that voice helped make Czechoslovakia imaginable.
In November 1989, crowds from Bratislava to Košice stood in the cold and shook their keys at the Communist regime. Four years later, on 1 January 1993, the federation split peacefully at midnight and Bratislava woke as a capital. Since then the west has filled with factories, motorways and new money. Yet travellers still meet the older rhythm in spa towns, mountain huts and the mining reservoirs where people now swim in summer.
Say hello
Dobrý deň
Good day; hello
Say: DOH-bree dyen
Poprosím si...
I'll have...
Say: POH-pro-seem si
Dá sa platiť kartou?
Can I pay by card?
Say: DAH sa PLAH-teet KAR-toh?
Je to voľné?
Is this seat free?
Say: yeh toh VOL-nyeh?
Na zdravie!
Cheers
Say: na ZDRAH-vyeh
Surprises
Part of Tokaj is Slovak. Several villages in the southeast belong to the historic Tokaj wine region, so the name on the bottle is not only Hungarian.
One UNESCO cave listing here crosses a national border. The Caves of Aggtelek Karst and Slovak Karst are a single karst system shared with Hungary.
At Čierna nad Tisou, freight still has to change trains or bogies. The broad gauge from Ukraine meets standard European track there.
Quiz
According to heraldic tradition, the three hills beneath Slovakia's double cross represent which ranges?
The triple hill is traditionally read as Tatra, Fatra and Mátra. The satisfying twist is that Mátra is now in Hungary, a reminder that old symbols often outlive modern borders.
3 days
Day 1
Morning in St. Martin's Cathedral and the old town, afternoon at Bratislava Castle and along the Danube, then an evening train or drive on to Banská Štiavnica.
Day 2
Spend the day in Banská Štiavnica: the sloping square, the Slovak Mining Museum, then a walk out to one of the tajchy before dinner back in town.
Day 3
Head north through Kremnica for the old mint town, continue to Špania Dolina above Banská Bystrica, and loop back west in the evening.
At a glance
At a glance
Member of
Read more
Listen
The song of the day
V dolinách
Karol Duchoň
It is the big, easy chorus many Slovaks know by heart, the kind of song that survives weddings, late-night tables and several generations.
Play a 30-second preview30-second clip via Apple Music
Before you go, watch or read
Obchod na korze
Film
This film opens up the wartime Slovak State through one provincial street, and the moral pressure of small-town life lands hard before you go.
Entry requirements
Slovakia entry requirements by passport: of 197 passports, 91 can enter without a visa, 0 get a visa on arrival, 0 apply online before they travel and 106 need a visa from an embassy or consulate.
Find your passport for the documents, the cost and how long you can stay.
Safety
US State Dept, updated September 1, 2025. Advisories change: check your own government's travel advice before you go.
From the community
🇸🇰 Today's country is Slovakia. Slovakia's Kremnica Mint has struck coins since 1328. Bratislava works best at walking pace: one minute you are under St. Martin's spire, the next beside the Danube with cyclists and cold river wind. In Banská Štiavnica the air smells of damp stone and coffee, and by evening people drift back to the sloping square as if the whole town kept the same appointment. Then a train north pulls the country open: spruce forest, little stations, and the Tatras suddenly…
Questions
At a glance
A tricolour of white, blue, and red with the national coat of arms near the hoist; the colors are Slavic panslavic colors, and the coat of arms features a double cross on three hills.
Travel guide
5 travelers5 trips0 wishlisted
4.7(3 ratings)
See who has been there and what you need to travel.
Poland
Ukraine
Hungary
Austria
Czechia