| Abstract: | The paper concentrates on three aspects that played a role in shaping the capital of Slovakia: the importance of a name given to the territory illustrating how renaming came to play a crucial role in creating a capital of Slovakia, an successful example of how to nationalise a place and a past; the second part of the paper describes the barriers in acceptance of Bratislava as the capital city of Slovakia among its citizens; the final part deals with ideological incentives in demolition and construction the town and its monuments. The main argument says that the route of Bratislava to the position of the capital of Slovakia was atypical, the majority of its population did not want this status, the actors of the national revolution—the Slovaks did not regard it as their centre, and it did not even have a definitely fixed Slovak name. Nevertheless, Bratislava succeeded gradually made its own history of ‘all Slovakia’. The democratic revolution of 1989–1993 confirmed the functioning of Bratislava as the centre of Slovakia, both in the actual political revolution and in the creation of democratic institutions. As a matter of fact, Bratislava could not be considered a ‘big city’ especially in comparison to Vienna, Prague or Budapest—with nearly half of million inhabitants belongs to rather small cities in East Central Europe and sometimes is characterised as a ‘provincial large city’. |
