Transcript Diapositiva 1

“D.E.S.T.IN.A.T.I.O.N. : EUROPE”
Developing Sustainable Tourism In A Travel
Information Overseas Network
PROJECT MEETING IN SLOVAKIA April 2007
Welcome to Nitra
Nitra
From a historical point of view, Nitra is considered to be the mother of
Slovak towns, a centre of education and culture of Slovakia and one of the
oldest settlements in the country. From the 9th century it was the seat of the
Princes of Nitra and the sovereigns of the Great-Moravian Duchy and later
of a successor to the Hungarian throne. In 830 the first historically
documented Catholic Church in Slovakia was built and in 880 a bishopric
was founded in Nitra. In 863 St. Cyril and St. Methodius, the Thessalonian
brothers, came as missionaries and laid the foundations of Slavic literacy,
education and culture. At the time, when the Great-Moravian Empire
reached its climax, Nitra was its significant centre. In the 11th century, the
town was the seat of the Bishop of Nitra and an administrative centre of the
Hungarian comitatus (county district). The further development of Nitra was
facilitated with a charter issued by Béla IV in 1248, which granted the town
new liberties and the privileges of a free Royal town. From the 15th to the
17th century Nitra suffered a lot during the Wars with the Turks and in 1663
it was almost completely destroyed. At the beginning of the 18th century,
the city was captured again. Rákoczy’s forces left it completely in ruins, so
Nitra had to recover from the disaster: the houses were restored and many
new significant buildings were added. The castle and the cathedral were
rebuilt, the pilgrimage church of the Mother of God was restored and the
construction of the Piaristic monastic complex was finished.The medieval
city was divided into the Upper Town and the Lower Town; the latter arose
from market settlements along the roads leading to the castle.
Opening of the
Project Meeting
by the Mayor at
the Town Hall
.....to school
The Castle of Nitra is a National Cultural Monument consisting of four
individual parts.
The Castle Fortification – The present fortification was gradually
constructed through the 16th and 17th centuries. Bishop Pálfy ordered
the massive wall to be built in 1673, during the reign of Leopold I (as it
appears from the Latin inscription above the entrance), as a protection
against the Turks. It is a star-shaped fortification system with five
impressive bastions. On each bastion there is a stone carved portrait of
one of Leopold’s commanders.
Proglas is the Millennium Memorial located close to the Castle entrance. This work by
Marián Žilík features the poetic preface to the Gospel, written by St. Constantine – Cyril
using the original Cyrillic script.
Vazil´s Tower
Vazil´s Tower
Vazil´s Tower is another remaining part of the medieval
fortification. The tower is named after Vazul (Vasil), who was the
prince of Nitra’s domain at the beginning of the11th century.
According to the legend, his life ended cruelly.The first
Hungarian king Stephan I did not like his cousin Vazul. He
disliked him so much that he imprisoned him in the Castle. He
did not take into consideration the fact that Vazul had just
become the prince of Nitra. Stephan’s only son, Imrich, died
suddenly and the king named his nephew Peter Orseol as his
successor. There was, however, a legitimate claim by Vazul and
so the king sent an executioner to Nitra to blind the unfortunate
prince and to pour hot lead into his ears. Later chroniclers
justified his cruel act as a way to protect Christianity against the
pagan prince Vazul.
Another
story says that a monk, Brother Fulgentius, called down a curse
upon the city: “For the eyes of prince Vazul, which were shining
like two suns, there will be two days of dark in town.” According
to the old reports, the town was really darkened, because of
many grasshoppers which destroyed the harvest.
The Statue of Prince Pribina represents the Slavic
prince who lived and ruled in Nitra in the early 9th
century and ordered the construction of Slovakia´s first
Christian temple. The Statue, unveiled in 1989, was
created by Tibor Bártfay, a native of Nitra.
Even though at the beginning Prince Pribina was a
heathen, he built the first Slovak Christian Church in
Nitra in 828. The church served first his wife Adelaide,
who came from the Bavarian duke family of Wilhelm. It
was consecrated by archbishop Adalram from Salzburg.
There is a report that Pribina built the church for his
wife, who married him because of her big love in spite
of his heathenism.
Slovak archaeologists have searched for Pribina´s
famous church for several centuries. At the beginning
everything seemed to be very clear. The Romanesque
chapel of Nitra castle had been considered the oldest
Christian church in Slovakia. The excavations on the
castle hill in 1930 did not support this theory. A grave
dating from the 11th century was found under the
building, which shifted the age of the church to the
period when Prince Pribina had already died. Therefore,
the archaeologists’ attention focused on other parts of
the city.
The Grand Seminary is a protected cultural site. It was built under Bishop Gustíni in
1764 – 1770. It was designed by Schmidt and Lippert, but in 1876 – 1878, Bishop
Roškováni had another wing added to the Baroque building. Now it houses the valuable
Diocesan Library. It is protected as a National Cultural Monument hosting some sixty-six
thousand volumes. 76 of them are rare 15th century prints (incunables). The NeoClassical building of the Grand Seminary is regarded as one of Nitra´s architectural
treasures.
The Canon House is a protected cultural site.
The construction of this Empire style building in
1818 - 1921 was ordered by Bishop Kluch. It
served the canon priests. The statue of Atlant
(generally known as Corgoň) supporting the
wall in the corner is a piece by Vavrinec
Dunajský. Corgoň was a smith in the Upper
Town. He had an enormous strength and
everybody admired his stout body. According to
the legend he saved the town from the first
Turkish incursion. The hero of the legend,
Corgon, is represented by the statue of Atlant,
the son of Titan Jaspetos, condemned by God
to hold the sphere forever. Above the entrance,
a couple of angels are holding Bishop Kluch´s
coat of arms. Attached to the House there is a
low 17th century building. The gate of this
building is exactly the same as the gate of
Zobor Monastery.
The Marian Sculpture - also known as the Black Death Column – is located in front
of the Castle entrance. The Baroque sculpture was built in 1750 by Bishop
Eszterházy to commemorate the plague epidemics in 1710 and 1739. On the
column top there is a statue of the Virgin Mary, while the lower part is covered
with stone carvings depicting her life. The whole sculpture is a piece by M.
Vogerle, an Austrian artist. It is one of the most valuable and most beautiful
plague columns in Slovakia.
The Cathedral of the Castle
is composed of three churches
The Upper Church - This one-nave Gothic cathedral
was built on the highest point of a rocky elevation on a
narrow space between a steep hill and a Romanesque
church, with which it is connected. The construction
took place from 1333 to 1355. After 1711, when the
castle lost its strategic importance, the whole cathedral
complex was rebuilt in Baroque style after the design of
the Italian architect Domenico Martinelli. The most
precious monument of the Upper Church is the main
altar of the Saviour, with a fresco by the Austrian painter
Anton Galliarti.
The Lower Church is
the latest section of the
Cathedral, built between
1621 and 1642. The most
precious object inside the
church is a convex
sculptured relief called
“The Deposition" ,by the
Austrian artist Johann
Pernegger. Under this
sculpture, in a predella,
there is a smaller marble
relief with a scene of "The
Burial of Christ". This
sculpture
has
been
ascribed to the renowned
Italian sculptor Donatello
or to his school.
St. Emeram´s Church
The small Romanesque
church is the oldest part
in
the
Cathedral.
Originally it was built in
the 11th century. Later it
was modified using
Gothic
architectural
elements. Its present
appearance is the result
of a reconstruction in
1931 - 1933. The site is
considered to be one of
the possible locations of
Slovakia’s first Christian
temple, built by Pribina.
St. Emeram´s hosts the
remains of St. Andrew,
St. Benedict and St.
Constantine–Cyril. The
relics of St. Cyril were
sent here from Rome.
The town centre of Nitra
Welcome reception at the Tourist Information Centre
“Nitriansky Expres”
(train sightseeing tour)
A sword as a symbol of peace – (at the entrance of the Museum) – The bronze sword
is an enlarged copy of a sword found in a nobleman’s tomb in the 9th century. The
bronze handle is covered with geometrical ornaments and masks. The blade is buried in
the ground, which makes it a symbol of peace.
The Music clock is almost five metres tall and it is made chiefly of stone and bronze.
The settlement of Nitra has always been dependent on the river , which is represented
here by a bronze engraving on the lower part of the column . The double face clock, 90
centimetres in radius, is designed to recall the early 20th century. The clock strikes a
high tone every quarter of an hour and a low tone every full hour; the latter is followed by
a short tune, played according to a set order. In the morning you can hear a chicken and
a rooster, then a series of Slovak folk instruments (the violin, the fujara, the cymbal and
the bagpipes). At noon, a chorus of children sings the piece “Nitra, dear Nitra”. During
the afternoon, the musical style moves from folk through modern to classic. At 10 p. m.,
French horns announce the coming of the night and after midnight, marked by
“Yesterday” by The Beatles, the clock strikes every hour with short quiet tunes.
The Bronze well pump is a stone and bronze piece surrounded by a bronze grid, a
Great Moravian symbol. The slender column of the pump ends in a breast shaped top, a
symbol of persistence and of the secrets of life
The Town Theatre
The central square is dominated by the new town theatre building which was designed by a group
of architects led by Jozef Hlavica from the Institute of Design in Bratislava. The decoration of the
interior was assigned to foremost art designers such as the national artist Tibor Bártfay and
others. The most valuable work of art is the main curtain with the theme of Great Moravia.
With regard to the past history of the central square, it is worth mentioning that in the Middle Ages
the Parish Church of St. James with its tower stood on this spot. It was damaged during the
Turkish wars. In the place of the tower, a Marian Column with a statue by the renowned Czech
sculptor A. Brandl was later built.
The Synagogue is a
protected cultural site. It
was built in 1910 – 1911,
following the project of L.
Baumhorn, the designer of
many other monumental
synagogues across the
former Hungarian Kingdom.
It is a square structure with
multi-storey galleries. The
façade is richly decorated
with Byzantine and other
Oriental patterns. Across
the street, there once stood
the Uránia Cinema, which
was destroyed by 1945 air
raids.
St. Ladislav´s Piarist Church and
Monastery.
This
complex
of
buildings is a protected cultural site.
In 1698, the Piarist monastic order
came to Nitra with the aim of
educating
poor
children.
The
foundations of their church and
monastery were laid in 1701.
Frequent fires prevented the building
from completion. In 1716, the almost
completed church was destroyed by
another fire. Instead of repeating the
work, a new two-steeple church
designed by Kristián Morvay, a
Piarist monk, was built in 1742 –
1748. The most valuable part of the
temple is the richly decorated main
altar by M. Vogerle, an Austrian
sculptor. The vaults supporting the
roof are covered with three
magnificent frescoes depicting the
history of Slavic Nitra by Edmund
Massányi, a native of the town. The
small square in front of the temple
includes statues of the 12 Apostles
and a Baroque Calvary by A. Brandl.
The Virgin Mary’s Assumption Church is a
protected cultural site. There was a temple standing
on this site in the 13th century; the present late
Renaissance building was completed in 1678.
Pilgrims have been coming here since 1747. The
present Calvary was built during the general
reconstruction, including its 14 chapels with late 19th
century stone carvings depicting the Passion of Christ
and the Saint Cross Chapel on the top of the hill.
The Monastery (the Mission House on the Calvary) – the impressive Mission House was built in
1765 for the Nazarene Order. Nowadays the building is used by the Divine Word Society
(Societas Verbi Dei), a Roman Catholic order, and by the Mission Museum, where we can see a
permanent exhibition of artefacts collected by Roman Catholic missionaries across the world.
Agrokomplex
In the sixties, Nitra became a place of an
agricultural exposition, later a place of the allstate harvest-home celebrations and since 1974
the all-state agricultural exposition Agrokomplex
has taken place here every year.
The Slovak Museum of Agriculture collects
objects of social life giving evidence of the
agricultural origin and cultural traditions of the
peasants’ community in Slovakia
.
The objects of the Open-air Museum (bakery,
milk cooling equipment, mills, distillery, seed
cleaner, school, oil presser, wax extractor,
haylofts, bee house, winegrower's house)
underline the irreplaceable importance of the
exhibits collected and of the acquisition activities
of the museum employees in 75 years. An
attractive part of the open air museum is a
narrow-gauged field railway.
The exposition ground of Agrokomplex with its
total area of 125 ha is the largest one in Slovakia.
THE ROMANESQUE CHURCH IN DRÁŽOVCE
St. Michael’s church is located near the village
of Drážovce, which during the Great Moravian
Empire was an important Slovak site and burial
place. It is an important and dominant feature
of the landscape, dating back to the early 12th
century. In good weather the little church can
be seen from Nitra Castle and all the way from
Topoľčany. The Romanesque one-nave church
ends in a semi-circular apse. The nave has got
a flat ceiling and a two-level choir on the west
side. The façade is plain. In the middle of the
frontage there is a tower ending with a
pyramidal roof. The church had two choirs,
one below the tower and the other one on the
Epistle Side. On the altar there were statues of
St. Michael, St. Rochus, St. Rosalie, St.
Sebastian and a painting of the Virgin Mary.
This area originally belonged to Zobor
monastery. The church became a parish
church in 1787. Although the one-nave little
church with its entry on the southern side
underwent many modifications in nearly every
century, it has retained its Romanesque look
up to now. Near the church there is a cemetery
with graves dating back to the 11th and the
17th centuries.
A curiosity:
One of the motifs on the reverse side of the 50 SK
(crowns) banknote is the silhouette of the medieval church
at Dražovce, a symbol of early Christianity on our territory.
A legend:
A legend says that king St. Stefan had this church built
because he believed that the hill was a holy place. When
the work started, blood trickled from the stone hill,
confirming that this was indeed hallowed ground. This
story spread quickly and the church became a pilgrimage
place. People visited the church only once a year , on St.
Michael’s day, when a special mass was served.
One day a sexton was cleaning the church when he
noticed a shiny figure before the altar paintings. He ran to
the village, crying: “A miracle happened. A shiny figure of
the Virgin Mary with Jesus in her arms appeared in the
church.” Only few people believed the sexton’s story, but
the Virgin Mary continued to appear again and again.
Later a shepherd gave an explanation. He said that while
he was walking past the church, he had heard a strange
music coming from the church. He had looked inside and
he had seen the Virgin Mary pointing sadly to the
crumbling roof and walls. People understood the reason of
her apparitions. Several centuries had passed since the
church had been built and nobody had taken care of the
building, so they decided to renovate it, and they have
been taking care of this church ever since. A special mass
is celebrated every year on September 29th to honour
Saint Michael on his name day.
A walk to the wildlife reserve ZOBORSKA LESOSTEP
The Spanish student
Laura Lozano Medina
was the only “foreign”
guest to reach the
top of the mountain
TÝMTO POTVRDZUJEME, ŽE
WE HEREBY CERTIFY THAT
ZDOLALA NAJVYŠŠÍ VRCH MESTA
CONQUERED THE
ZOBOR MOUNTAIN
NITRY – ZOBOR
A SVOJOU ODVAHOU A VYTRVALOSŤOU
AND WITH HER COURAGE AND ENDURANCE
UKÁZALA SVOJU VNÚTORNÚ SILU
SHE SHOWED HER INSIDE POWER
Kto chce hnúť svetom, musí hnúť najprv sebou.
-SOKRATES-
NITRA 19-04-2007
Demonstration of
traditional lace making
by a woman from
Banská Bystrica (a
“master of the art”)
Museum of the Slovak National Uprising in Banská Bystrica
The exposition presents the Slovakian antifascist resistance movement in Europe in the
years 1939-1945.
The exibition is divided into 13 chronologically
ordered topics. Each of them represents a
different chapter of the World and Slovak
history events.
Visitors can see short authentic documentary
movies on plasma screens. Besides all this
photographic and film information many three dimensional objects are also displayed in the
showcases.
One of the earliest references to Špania dolina dates from about 4000-4500 years
ago. The village is situated in the eastern part of the Low Tatra Mountains. High quality
mineral water springs are to be found in the area of Špania dolina. The village has got
a long history of mining. Gold, silver and copper were the main articles of commerce in
the history of the village. Heavy black copper contained about 60% of silver and
therefore it was a very popular commodity for the Venetian merchants, who extracted
the silver which was used to produce the famous Venetian mirrors. When Columbus
anchored in Cuba, he had many copper rods and bars on board of his ship, which all
originated from the Špania dolina region. The wreck of Columbus’s ship was found in
1998 and bits of local copper were found on board. In 1992 copper was also used for
the reconstruction of a church in Munich.
Špania dolina and lace making.
Local women (and few men) are still
keeping the local tradition of lace
making alive. Beautiful and valuable
lace of different shapes is made in the
village and it is known all over the
world. It can be made on request for
those who prefer a particular size,
shape or design. Some lace items can
be seen in the small local lace making
museum, where people can also find a
book, written by the lady who
presented us the lace making craft in
Banská Bystrica
The miners’clock
Brezno in the Low Tatras
Slovak Eurosalaš in Michalová:
presentation of the shepherds´
work and preparation of typical
Slovak food
“Zubria zvernica”
(a bison menagerie)
in Lovce
Topoľčianky
The National stud farm
Topoľčianky - Hippology Museum
The Castle in Topoľčianky,
the former royal estate and
the presidents’ summer
residence
Coronation of
“The Queen of Nitra”
CORONATION SPEECH
1. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, friends,
On behalf of our Election Committee, I am honoured to present the results of the election of the Queen of
DESTINATION kingdom for the year 2007.
I also wish to thank everyone who ran in the election and went through the examination.
On the basis of the examination results, the Election Committee has decided to nominate
Miss Melania for the post of the Queen of DESTINATION kingdom for the year 2007.
Please, welcome our Queen.
2. The Coronation Oath
a) Madam, is your Majesty willing to take the Coronation Oath?
Queen: I am.
b) Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the People of DESTINATION kingdom according to their
respective laws and customs?
Queen: I solemnly promise to do so.
c) Will you solemnly promise to be a good example for all your people in studying and living?
Queen: I solemnly promise to do so.
d) Will you solemnly promise to work tirelessly days and nights for the good name of our DESTINATION
kingdom?
Queen: I solemnly promise to do so.
(Queen kneels saying these words:)
The things which I have here before promised, I will perform and keep.
Remember the motto of our kingdom:
“STUDY AND PLAY ALL THE DAY, TRAVEL AND MAKE NEW FRIENDS EVERYWHERE.”
3. Your Majesty, as a representative of all the participants I do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm
that we, your people, will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Your Majesty , that we will well and truly serve Your
Majesty, that we will loyally observe and obey all the orders of Your Majesty, and that we are prepared to work and
do our best for the bright future of our DESTINATION kingdom.
God bless and save the Queen!
The coronation ceremony was followed by Slovak national dances performed by students of the school organized
in an ensemble called “Furmani”.
…see you next year!!!