The pride of every Christian city is its parish church. This is undoubtedly the case with St. Martin`s Minister, Bratislava`s biggest, oldest and most spectacular church. St. Martin`s Minister was a coronation church in the years 1563-1830. The first ruler to be crowned here was Maximilian II. The coronation ceremony took place on September 8th 1563. It was followed by eighteen other coronations including that of Maria Theresia on June  25th 1741. The last king who received St. Stephen`s royal crown below the lead statue of St. Martin was Ferdinand V on September 28th 1830. An incomplete list of eleven kinkg and eight royal spuses crowned in Pressburg`s Minister is on the board placed on the inside northern wall.

Reconstruction in the Baroque taste first concentrated on the interior and later on the construction of the fourth chapel. In the years 1732-1734 the ground plan of the church was widened by the chapel of St. John the Almsgiver one of the most valuable artistic monuments of Bratislava. The baroque chapel was probably built according to the George Raphael Donner`s design (1693-1741). The recognized artist Georg Raphael Donner was entrusted with more works in the interior of the church. The new bulky Baroque altar with Donner`s monumental group of statues of St. Martin replaced the removed Gothic one. This wonderful sculpture made in 1744 from lead represents a Roman soldier from Transdanubian Pannonia, who cuts his cape in two in a mighty mevement of sabre to give half of it to a beggar suffering from cold.

The Baroque tower was destroyed by fire caused by lightning in 1833. It was only three years after the last coronation was held in the Minister. Reconstruction was entrusted to an important Pressburg Classicist architect Ignác Feigler senior. He chode the fashionable romanticizing style. The tower was given the Neo Gothic face, which has survived until today. The tower of the Minister is 85 metres tall. At its top is a gilded 2×2m cushion bearing the copy of the Hungarian royal crown. The imitation is one metre tall and weighs 300 kilograms. The visitors of Bratislava Minister`s monumental interior of 70×23 metres can admire there many remarkable works of art, and others are deposited in the parts of the church closed to the public.

The street leading northward from presbytery of the Minister is called Kapitulská. Its length was determined by the town fortifications at its northern end. This is one of the oldest streets of the town and the Church dignitaries, who were moved from the castle to the settlement below the castle by the beginning of the 13th century, created it. The houses of provost, canons and priests formed the street. It used to be the main street of the Romanesque Pressburg. It ran further to Zámocká ulica and the Castle. Expansion of the town in the 14th century pushed the street to the wester edge of the town.


In the right corner, at the end of the eastern row of houses of Kapitulská ulica street stands a big building with a comparatively large forecourt. It originated in 1632 by reconstruction of an older house as ordered by the then provost Juraj Draškovič. The provost used it and this is the reason why it is called the Provost`s Palace. The present Provost`s Palace though, is a two-storied Renaissance building with short lateral wings, which close the mentioned forecourt or rather a garden. The Provost`s Palace is today the seminary for priests.

The Esterházy Palace (house Nos. 6-10) is the only secular building on Kapitulská street. It is one of the oldest palaces in the city, as it was build almost century before the city was seized by building frenzy in time of Maria Theresia, which gave origin to plenty of wonderful Baroque, Rococo, and Neo Classical palaces. It was buld in the mid-17th century and restore in the Baroque style in the following century. The Listh family owned the original house. Later Count Esterházy bought it. The governor Albert, son-in-law of Queen Maria Theresia also lived in the house for some time.

The venerable looking Gothic house No. 4 in the northern part of Kapitulská street called the Small Provost`s House will certainly attract the visitor`s attention. It consist of two Gothic houses from the 15th century. Behind the eastern row of the houses of Kapitulská ulica are the western town fortifications, which were subject to extensive reconstruction, when the New Bridge  over the Danube was constructed in the early 1970`s. The massive Vtáčia bašta (Bird`s Bastion), which was the defensive counterpart of the Luginsland bastion at the opposite slope of the castle hill, stands outside of the fortifications.

The dominating building of Klariská ulica street is the St. Clara church and Monastery. Monastic building have stood here since the 13th century. They were originally Cistercian nuns, who along with Franciscan monks, were the first to come to Pressburg. By the end of 13th century the Gothic nave of the church was started and it was finished in 1375. The vault of the church had to be restored again after fire in 1515. Presbytery was added to the nave and both are vaulted with ribbed cross vaults. In the early 15th century a five-sided Gothic tower lavishly adorned by pinnacles, gargoyles and little statues in what is called the Beautyful Styl was added on the side of Farská ulica street. Today there are true copies of four statues on the tower. The original statues are kept inside the church. This Bratislava`s landmark is impressive not only for its beauty, but also for its bold architectural solution. The builder deciced for an unconventional approach when he did not build the tower on the foundations buried in earth. He rather built it on the lateral wall of the church nave.

The original Gothic monastery of St. Clara became dilapidated, when the nuns left Pressburg fleeing from the Turks in 1526. The order moved to Trnava. Later they came back only to face ownership problems with the city ant hte consequences of another fire. Finally it was Archbishop Peter Pázmány who decided for a deep chnge of architecture of the monastery. He supported all Catholic institutions within the framework of the Re-Catholicizing program of the Church and also helped to the nuns of St. Clara`s order. The new monastery was built on the foundations of the old. The former manastery was reconstructed in the years 1957-1961 and it became the seat of the Slovak Pedagogic Library. The monastery now shelters the Office of the European Council.