Dear explorers,

after such a long time spent finally I am here to talk about something new and different!

One week me and my girlfriend, despite being very warm, made the decision of driving from Bratislava to the central region of Slovakia denominated Banskobystrický kraj  for a cultural summer weekend, we stayed over Friday and Saturday nights since our research came to tell us that it was 100% worthy to do so!

For such a purpose we chose to stay at a holiday apartment  with garden on a small hill, the panorama view was simply nice because we could see by distance the scenery of the hilly landscape as shown below:

We drew two separated plans, one for Saturday and one for Sunday because having the considered the type of attractions and the locations they involved us a different mind-set, therefore on Saturday we went for visiting the outdoor attractions as followed:

1. Kalvaria chapel
2. Banská Štiavnica downtown
3. Banská Štiavnica in miniature exposition
4. Banská Štiavnica castle with city walls

The first attraction is a recently restored baroque-style chapel which before ten years ago was abandoned,  it is situated on the top of a small hill and the restoration works took place from 2008 and were completed on 2016, it was supported by some private funds issued by the VUB Bank institution, it looks like a small architectural jewel which must really be visited to realize how nicely they made it, moreover, if you are with a girlfriend here you have a great chance to enjoy a romantic morning hiking 🙂 you just need max. 90 minutes, therefore you can’t miss it out!

Some pictures below could be impressive to figure out how the spot it is:

The second one is the historical town of Banská Štiavnica which nowadays has become very popular and crowded, you can even find two Italian fashion boutiques!

Having visited it earlier on 2008 I can compare the difference and I can say that at that time was a peaceful town, however long time is spent since then and everything, like everywhere in Europe, is to be properly arranged for the ‘visitors’. If you like to have  some small shopping then the market will not disappoint you.

Here below, few pictures are shown:

The third one is purely an indoor exposition of Banská Štiavnica and the nearby villages in miniature, it is something quite recent, it is worthy to be visited for 1.50€ of entrance fee, here below you there are two pictures:

The fourth one is the city castle with high walls, this castle even not that impressive has an outdoor courtyard and some sub-levels indoor rooms arranged for punishing some war prisoners, perhaps it might look scary at your eyes, however that was how it worked in our ancient world. Overall, it is worthy to visit if you are in Banská Štiavnica for the 1st time and it takes maximum one hour for visiting it.

Finally, the only Sunday plan was to visit a manor house situated in Svätý Anton , in Slovak is commonly defined as Kaštieľ  that’s to say a huge noble palace which was built under the Austro-Hungaric empire and numerous rich family members lived in there over the past centuries. My personal feeling was to visit a Schönbrunn Palace in miniature,  and I am not much in for visiting such palaces in which the luxuriousness is emphasized, however it is a part of the European history and we can not ignore it. Just I am not going to mention details on it but instead I will show you some pictures of it:

In conclusion, the summer trip itself had a good achievement as a combination of cultural enrichment with some soft hiking activity, it was useful to re-visit what the history was and what fabulous left over the past centuries, therefore if over the summer you are a bit bored of dealing always with just swimming or just hiking through the nature you may find a great compromise with such a trip, just go for it!

If any advice do not hesitate to contact me or just leave a comment!

Giuseppe