Who's the King of the Castle?
One of the most conspicuous buildings of the town is the Bratislava Castle situated on a plateau 82 m above the Danube. A castle has existed on this site since time immemorial. It has been the acropolis of a Celtic town, part of the Roman Limes Romanus, a huge Slav fortified settlement and a political, military and religious center of Great Moravia. A castle of stone was built only in the 10th century (part of Hungary), it was turned into a Gothic anti-Hussite fortress under Sigismund of Luxemburg in 1430, in 1562 it became a Renaissance castle, and in 1649 a baroque reconstruction took place. Under Queen Maria Theresa, the castle was turned into a prestige seat of the royal governor Albert von Sachsen-Teschen. In 1784, when Bratislava ceased to be the capital of Hungary, the castle was turned into a school for Catholic clergy, and later, in 1802, into barracks. In 1811, the castle was inadvertently destroyed by fire by the soldiers of the barracks and lay in ruins until the 1950s, when it was reconstructed mostly in its former Maria Theresa style.