Diplomatic Events

During the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the cosmopolitan and polyglot city was called Pressburg in German and Yiddish, whence Prešporok in Slovak and Prešpurk in Czech, and Pozsony in Hungarian. It was a glittering rival to Prague. Following WWI and the collapse of the Habsburg empire, Bratislava became part of nascent Czechoslovakia. During the Nazi period, it was the capital of Jozef Tiso's vassal fascist state before falling under Josef Stalin’s boot in 1945. In 1993, following the peaceful dissolution of the Czech and Slovak federation, Bratislava became the capital of newly independent Slovakia. 

While all those periods together have left a rich historic and architectural fabric, many consider the Communist era buildings as ugly Socialist relics and a foreign intrusion in the city, said Peres. In particular, the concrete structures in and near the historic Old Town are especially glaring and ill-conceived, he noted. 

The Hotel Kyjev, located on the Kamenné Námestie in the former Jewish neighborhood in the capital’s heart, fails to integrate with its older surroundings. Comparing the half-abandoned tower to Tel Aviv’s cavernous and under-utilized Central Bus Station, Peres called it a “mausoleum”.

Built in 1973, it was inspired by Danish architect Arne Jacobsen’s SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen. Both buildings have been criticized for their lack of urban context. The SAS Hotel has been compared to a pack of cigarettes. Critics have been no kinder in describing the Hotel Kyjev. Both buildings replaced historical landmarks with striking brutalist structures, raw concrete facades, and rigid geometrical if functionalist design. Standing 65 meters and soaring 15 floors, the Hotel Kyjev is among the tallest – and arguably ugliest – buildings in Bratislava. Its interiors were originally decorated in a retro-futuristic 1970s aesthetic that has aged badly. 

Equally anachronistic is the OD Prior shopping center which opened in 1968. Designed by Ivan Matúšik, it was the first indoor mall in the former Czechoslovakia and had the country’s first escalators.

Another obsolete brutalist monstrosity stands nearby on Medená Street, a few steps from Kamenné Námestie and the nearby Comenius University. The residential building erected in 1974 consists of terraces with supporting columns. Today its striking if faded yellow decoration has been defaced with graffiti. Its architects Ján Hauskrecht and Štefan Svetko saw the 1960s and early 1970s as years of loosening Bratislava’s conservative social atmosphere. They envisioned their post-modern apartment bloc as part of a brave new world turning its back on Bratislava’s architectural and political legacy.

Of special interest for this author is the Most SNP, (Bridge of the Slovak National Uprising"), commonly referred to as the UFO Bridge for its futuristic design. Built between 1967 and 1972 by architect J. Lacko and engineer A. Tesár, the bridge required the demolition of the neo-Moorish Neolog Synagogue which was built in 1893 and designed by Dezso Milch. Symbolizing fin-de-siecle modernity and equality in the dying Austro-Hungarian Empire, the synagogue with its two octagonal onion dome towers was constructed on Fish Square adjacent to St. Martin's Cathedral. It was replaced by an 85-meter-high tower with an observation deck and restaurant which many people have compared to a flying saucer.

Of the more than 15,000 Jews living in Bratislava in 1939, 3,500 survived World War II. Having outlasted the Nazi onslaught and the Holocaust, the city’s landmark synagogue was demolished to make room for a structure some saw as extolling the USSR and its cosmonauts.

Rather than tearing down the city’s Soviet-era city center towers, Peres called for the buildings to be stripped down to their steel core allowing them to be repurposed and reused.