St Nicholas’s Church, the town’s oldest building of art historical interest, is located on a gentle elevation on the southwestern side of Senec’s main square. Nowadays, it is the determining element of the townscape. Its foundations date back to the Gothic period while it gained its present form by the mid-18th century as a result of various reconstructions, demonstrating characteristic Baroque features. The Sempoz (Senec) congregation first appears in a written record from 1308. Historians have also found evidence that there was already a small wooden church on the mound during the Great Moravian Empire, which also played a protective role. The 1326 Zonctorony (Tureň) border census records the fact that the Senec church was dedicated to St Nicholas. The originally early Gothic building built in 1326 has also undergone various transformations. Sources mention reconstruction in 1561, a Renaissance-style reconstruction in 1633 and a Baroque-style reconstruction in 1740. The building continued to evolve in the 19th and 20th centuries. There are four altars: the high altar is dedicated to St Nicholas, the left-hand side altar to the Queen of the Rosary, the right-hand side altar to St Ladislaus and the fourth altar to St Teresa. All are in Rococo style. At the top of the church mound, there is a small square around the church, surrounded by a wall, which evokes the stations of the way of the cross. The Calvary statue group dating from 1934 stands next to the wall at the foot of the sanctuary whereas an impressive Lourdes cave was created beneath it.
The single-naved, Secession style St Elisabeth’s Church (Blue Church) was built between 1909 and 1913 according to the plans of Budapest architect, Ödön Lechner. Its most striking feature is its blue plaster-work and blue-glazed tiles.
A small chapel stands in the narrow lane alongside Hradská ulica. Its patron is unknown. It is an interesting small building with a pitched roof. The defining element of its ground floor is the chapel’s entrance, the shied field, in the middle of which there is a small recess to place a holy statue, bordered by a narrow ledge. The chapel’s interior consists of a single room with two empty statue recesses on each side and covered by mitred vaulting. The walls boast decorative murals. A statue of Christ on the Cross, most likely made of wood, has survived until today in the interior. The chapel was built in 1880.
The Abbot of the Pannonhalma Benedictines built a church in honour of St Bartholomew in Dunajská Lužná in the 13th century. In the 17th century, it also served as the parish church during the sectarian struggles of 1684. Due to its size, it was unable to accommodate pilgrims, so Abbot of Pannonhalma, Dániel Somogyi, ordered the construction of a larger church on the site of the Romanesque church, which was then built between 1786 and 1797. The church was consecrated in honour of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in 1797. It is still one of the most important buildings in the village and was listed as a monument in 1963. Comprehensive renovation was carried out between 1982 and 1984. This included replacing the entire roof structure, the main joist, the flooring and part of the plaster-work as well as repainting the entire church. Copper plates were used as roofing material. A new parsonage was built between 1989 and 1990, which has been the seat of the Dunajská Lužná Dominican convent since 1996. The latest comprehensive renovation of the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross has been ongoing since 2004 (rehabilitation of daub walls, window replacement, new electrical wiring, pew replacement, exterior and interior painting, new entrance door, putting the church’s surroundings in order and tidying up the square between the church and the parsonage).
Built in 1783 on the foundations of an earlier church, St Michael’s Church is a single-naved, late Baroque building. We have no exact details about its predecessor’s construction and consecration, but we do know that it was consecrated to the honour of the Archangel St Michael. We can form a picture of the status of the previous church and congregation on the basis of surviving visitation records dating from 1659, 1680, 1696 and 1713. In 1680, Čunovo was a still an arm or a branch of Rusovce, whose parish priest came to dispense the holy sacraments. According to the records, the village landowners asked the bishop for an independent parish with its own priest. Their request was fulfilled in 1689 and Čunovo became a parish in its own right, with its own seal among other things, several imprints of which still survive; the village’s current coat of arms was later modelled on this. The 1696 visitation record preserved the name of the local parish priest, Martin Ignác Horváth, who was then serving his third year in Čunovo. A statue of St John of Nepomuk stands near the former port on the banks of the Danube. This was erected to commemorate the devastating flood that literally washed away half the village on All Saints Day in 1787. Also near the church, but outside the village walls, you will come across a statue of the Virgin Mary. This was erected in the second half of the 18th century by Melchior Kerekes, the sub-prefect of Moson County, who lived in Čunovo and was a generous supporter of the local church. His mansion house stood on the site of today’s local council offices.
The church, located in Bratislava’s old town, was originally built in Gothic style with later reconstructions combining numerous stylistic features into the sacral building complex. It is the oldest ecclesiastical building in the Slovakian capital. It merits attention not only because of its architectural significance but also due to important historical events connected to it.
The parish church at the lower end of the village is one of the oldest surviving buildings in Malacky. It was built by the protestant Balassa family. The single-naved, polygonal sanctuary church was built around 1574. It has been in the hands of the Catholic Church since 1621. The late Renaissance-style tower was added in 1672. The most valuable item among the sacral relics in the interior is the pulpit dating from the second half of the 17th century. The altar’s central, main image depicts the Most Holy Trinity; the painting was done in the middle of the 19th century. The church has two side altars, one is the Lourdes Virgin Mary altar, the second the Heart of Jesus altar. There is a crypt beneath the church.
St Martin’s Cathedral is the largest and most significant three-naved Gothic church in Bratislava. Its construction began in the 13th century, in an old cemetery where there was already a small chapel. It was transformed over the centuries, achieving its current appearance after 1849. The cathedral played an extremely important role during Bratislava’s 200 years as capital of the Kingdom of Hungary (between 1563 and 1830). Eleven monarchs and eight queens were crowned in the Gothic St Martin’s Cathedral during this time, the most famous of which was Maria Theresa.
The church stands next to the Croatian Canal (Chorvátske rameno), a former branch of the Danube, near the Technopol building complex. In 2003, Pope John Paul II celebrated mass here and the square now bears his name. The Catholic Church owns 1.7215 hectares of land, of which 1.2970 hectares proper are in the hands of the parish (comprising the church, the parish offices, the pastoral centre, playgrounds and parking spaces); its built area is 1,108.5m2.
According to the sources, the Holy Spirit Parish Church, built around 1580, is a single-naved Renaissance-style sacral building, with a polygonal masonry presbytery and a massive rectangular tower with supporting walls. The interior’s barrel-vaulting with lunettes is worthy of attention. On the western side, you can see the gallery built at the end of the 19th century, which is closed by Prussian vaulting. The church is built of stone and covered with a tiled roof.
The chapel in the local cemetery was gradually transformed into a Gothic church in the first half of the 14th century. The Gothic church tower built onto the 1.5m-thick double walls is first mentioned in sources from 1306. The church was later rebuilt in Renaissance and Baroque style. Its present state reflects its 1888 transformation, when the parish priest, Móric Alster, extended the church by eight metres to increase its capacity and also increased its height by one metre. On entering the remarkable building, the visitor is first struck by the high altar carved in 1949 from Carrara marble, followed by the five stained-glass windows from 1896 depicting religious themes, the statues, the murals, the Baroque pulpit dating from the early 18th century, the two side altars from 1712 listed as protected monuments and a series of other special, sacred monuments.
The church, constructed between 1270 and 1279, is the borough’s oldest building. It was originally consecrated to the honour of the Virgin Mary and then to St King Ladislaus. From 1968, it was again consecrated in the name of the Virgin Mary and is now Our Lady of Seven Sorrows. The single-naved church ends in a multi-tiered sanctuary whose Gothic quadripartite is decorated with medieval headstones. The church is home to the reliquary containing the relics of the mid-19th-century martyr, blessed Zeman Titus, who was born here.