Culture & Arts
Banská Štiavnica is a town where history meets a rich cultural and artistic scene.
Its lanes breathe history, yet pulse with contemporary life. The town has plenty of museums and galleries that bring its rich history and art closer to visitors – from the Open-air Mining Museum, where you can experience the authentic atmosphere of mining life, to modern galleries showcasing contemporary art. Throughout the year, Banská Štiavnica hosts numerous festivals celebrating music, theatre, literature and film.
The historic town centre is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List and is home to many monuments, such as the Old Castle and the New Castle, St Catherine’s Church and the Calvary. Each of these buildings tells its own story and adds to the town’s unique atmosphere. If you’re looking for interactive experiences, there are exhibitions such as the Bank of Love, where you can discover the longest love poem in the world, or the Glanzenberg Hereditary Adit, which takes you underground right beneath the town. Banská Štiavnica is a place where everyone finds something to enjoy – whether you are a history or art lover, or just looking for new experiences.
This was the first mining academy and one of the first technical academies in the world. It was founded by Maria Theresa in 1762, building on […]
Miners were once called to work by the knocks of a wooden mallet on a wooden board. Five mining knocking towers survive in Slovakia, and two […]
One of the most visited attractions in Banská Štiavnica. The underground exhibition in the Bartolomej Adit offers an extraordinary experience: a real descent into the mine. […]
The mining water management system, now inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, was the world’s biggest water engine until the Panama Canal opened (15 August […]
The Stone Sea is a natural phenomenon formed from the prehistoric lava of a stratovolcano: a 13-ha area evenly strewn with huge, bluish boulders. They were […]
The Evangelical church as it stands today is the result of several rebuildings, and you can see Gothic, Renaissance and Classicist features. The oldest and most […]
Ladislav Hudec was a world-famous architect from Banská Bystrica. After being taken prisoner in Russia, he made his way to Shanghai, where for more than 30 […]
More than 390 years ago, the local mines saw the world’s first documented use of gunpowder for something other than warfare: blasting in a mine. It […]
This is the first school in the world (in the village of Štiavnické Bane) where falconry is taught as a compulsory subject. From a very young […]