HOLIDAY IDEAS culture & sights scientific & industrial monuments

Tajchy are lakes situated in central Slovakia. They were constructed for the needs of the local mines and today they serve for recreation bathing in the wonderful natural setting next to Banská Štiavnica, the town inscribed in the UNESCO List of Natural and Cultural Heritage.

The unique set of monuments in town Banská Štiavnica (inscribed in the UNESCO List of Cultural Heritage) consists of valuable technical monuments associated with the mining past of the town.

The highest situated point in Slovakia where people regularly work is the observatory at the top of the peak Lomnický štít in the mountain range Vysoké Tatry. It is at the altitude above sea level of 2,632 m.

Beautiful opals from mines in Dubník (or Dubnica) in eastern Slovakia are admired in the whole world and now the mines became a valuable technical monument.

The narrow gauge Historic Forest Railway in Vychylovka in the Kysuce region in northwestern Slovakia is a technological masterpiece of world prominence operating in the area that divides the Kysuce and Orava regions.

The history of railways in Slovakia started at the main railway station of Bratislava in 1848. The compound of buildings includes the oldest of them which served to trains pulled by steam engine.

Kremnica is the historic centre of gold mining and coin striking in Slovakia. Coins have been struck in the local mint for almost seven hundred years.

The town Hurbanovo is notorious not only for the locally produced beer Zlatý bažant but above all for the oldest Slovak observatory, history of which initiated in 1871.

In practice, the logging railway in Oravská Lesná in Orava was not only cheaper with respect to the construction and operation, compared to the conventional railways, but it also could cope with a very rugged terrain. Nowadays, it is not used for the original purpose - the transport of timber, but it serves as an attraction of the Orava Museum.

The railway bridge near Telgárt in central Slovakia was the first dissected arched structure made of iron-concrete in Czechoslovak railways. The tunnel of Kornel Stodola not far away from the bridge is the only spiral-shaped tunnel in Slovakia.