Museums & Galleries
Thirty specialized museums and dozens of galleries are located in Bratislava. See the overview of the best of them.
Museums
Bratislava is home to 30 specialised museums. In the City History Museum, situated in the Old Town Hall, you can find out about the city history and the daily life of its inhabitants from prehistoric times until the end of the 1930s, while the Museum of History in Bratislava Castle documents history and the ethnocultural development of the Slovaks, It also houses an extensive numismatic collection from ancient times to the present. An authentic museum covering WWII and the later Cold War can be found in museum B-S 4 alongside the Iron Curtain in Bratislava-Petržalka.
Galleries
Bratislava is the perfect destination for visual art lovers. Rich and unique collections ranging from medieval to contemporary art are on display in the Bratislava City Gallery and the Slovak National Gallery. Both galleries house permanent and temporary exhibitions including plaster and bronze casts of the character heads made by the sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt during his stay in Bratislava. The only preserved original, the bust of the Capuchin, is exhibited in the Bratislava City Gallery in Mirbach Palace.
The best examples of Slovak modern art can be seen in the Nedbalka Gallery with the interior layout similar to the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Less than 20 kilometres away from the city centre is the Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum, one of the youngest European museums of modern art, offering a unique symbiosis of works of art, modern architecture and surrounding nature.
Our tip: Every first Wednesday of the month, museums and galleries are free!