The six avenues
Radiating from one point — the original 1774 plan.
Svetovid — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Akkbula — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Akkbula — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Radosław Botev & Sylwia Botev — CC BY 3.0 pl
On the Danube's south bank, facing the old town, lies one of **Europe's oldest public parks** — and possibly the oldest in central Europe created for the public from the outset. It was laid out in **1774** on the orders of Archduke Albert, a date that puts it decades ahead of most European civic parks. The essential difference is that it was not a palace garden later opened to the people but **designed from the start as public space**. The original plan is still legible: **six straight avenues** radiating from a single central point in the French baroque manner, with huge old trees between them. At its centre stands an odd **Gothic tower** that looks as though it does not belong — and it does not. It is the remnant of a fourteenth-century Franciscan church that was demolished, its tower moved here in 1897 to serve as a romantic ornament. The park today is everyday space: running and cycling paths, a playground, and lawns. From its bank comes the best view of the **castle and old town** across the river.
Radiating from one point — the original 1774 plan.
The remnant of a demolished church, moved here as an ornament.
The best angle on the castle and old town across the Danube.
South bank of the Danube, Petržalka, Bratislava
Worth it for two reasons. First **the park itself** and the view from it back to the castle — the best picture of the city, and free. Second, **Petržalka** is a phenomenon in its own right: the largest concentration of prefabricated housing in central Europe, built in the 1970s and 80s for over a hundred thousand people, and the place where a visitor understands how most of the Eastern Bloc actually lived. Walking across the **SNP Bridge** is part of it — there is a covered lower deck for pedestrians, and while the suspended restaurant above costs money, the view from the walkway is free.
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