Bratislava ( ,  , ;  ), historically known as Preßburg (Pressburg) , is the capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000—approximately 140% of the official figures. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia at the foot of the Little Carpathians, occupying both banks of the River Danube and the left bank of the River Morava. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital to border two sovereign states.

The city's history has been influenced by people of many nations and religions, including Austrians, Bulgarians, Croats, Czechs, Germans, Hungarians, Jews and Slovaks. It was the coronation site and legislative center and capital of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1563 to 1783; eleven Hungarian kings and eight queens were crowned in St Martin's Cathedral. Most Hungarian parliament assemblies were held here from the 17th century until the Hungarian Reform Era, and the city has been home to many Hungarian, German and Slovak historical figures.

Today Bratislava is the political, cultural and economic centre of Slovakia. It is the seat of the Slovak president, the parliament and the Slovak Executive. It has several universities, and many museums, theatres, galleries and other cultural and educational institutions. Many of Slovakia's large businesses and financial institutions have headquarters there.

GDP at purchasing power parity is about three times higher than in other Slovak regions. Bratislava receives around one million tourists every year, mostly from the Czech Republic, Germany, and Austria.

Etymology
The city received its contemporary name on 16 March 1919. Until then, it was mostly known in English as "Pressburg" (from its German name, Preßburg), since after 1526, it was dominated mostly by the Habsburg monarchy and the city had a relevant ethnic German population. That is the term from which the pre-1919 Slovak (Prešporok) and Czech (Prešpurk) names are derived.

The linguist Ján Stanislav believed the city's Hungarian name, Pozsony, to be attributed to the surname Božan, likely a prince who owned the castle before 950. Although the Latin name was also based on the same surname, according to research by the lexicologist Milan Majtán, the Hungarian version was never officially represented in official records from the time in which the prince would have lived. All three versions, however, were related to those found in Slovak, Czech and German: Vratislaburgum (905), Braslavespurch and Preslavasburc (both 907).

The medieval settlement Brezalauspurc (literally Braslav's castle) is sometimes attributed to Bratislava, but the actual location of Brezalauspurc is under scholarly debate. The city's modern name is credited to Pavol Jozef Šafárik's misinterpretation of Braslav as Bratislav in his analysis of medieval sources, which led him to invent the term Břetislaw, which later became Bratislav.

During the revolution of 1918–1919, the name 'Wilsonov' or 'Wilsonstadt' (after US President Woodrow Wilson) was proposed by American Slovaks, as he supported national self-determination. The name Bratislava, which had been used only by some Slovak patriots, became official in March 1919 with the aim that a Slavic name could support demands for the city to be part of Czechoslovakia.

Other alternative names of the city in the past include  (meaning "Danube City", also used in Latin), , , .

In older documents, confusion can be caused by the Latin forms Bratislavia, Wratislavia etc., which refer to Wrocław, Poland, not Bratislava. The Polish city has a similar etymology despite spelling differences.

History

The first known permanent settlement of the area began with the Linear Pottery Culture, around 5000 B.C. in the Neolithic era. About 200 B.C., the Celtic Boii tribe founded the first significant settlement, a fortified town known as an oppidum. They also established a mint, producing gold and silver coins known as biatecs.

The area fell under Roman influence from the 1st to the 4th century A.D. and was made part of the Danubian Limes, a border defence system. The Romans introduced grape growing to the area and began a tradition of winemaking, which survives to the present.

The Slavs arrived from the East between the 5th and 6th centuries during the Migration Period. As a response to onslaughts by Avars, the local Slavic tribes rebelled and established Samo's Empire (623–658), the first known Slavic political entity. In the 9th century, the castles at Bratislava (Brezalauspurk) and Devín (Dowina) were important centres of the Slavic states: the Principality of Nitra and Great Moravia. Scholars have debated the identification as fortresses of the two castles built in Great Moravia, based on linguistic arguments and because of the absence of convincing archaeological evidence.

The first written reference to a settlement named "Brezalauspurc" dates to 907 and is related to the Battle of Pressburg, during which a Bavarian army was defeated by the Hungarians. It is connected to the fall of Great Moravia, already weakened by its own inner decline and under the attacks of the Hungarians. The exact location of the battle remains unknown, and some interpretations place it west of Lake Balaton.

In the 10th century, the territory of Pressburg (what would later become Pozsony county) became part of Hungary (called the "Kingdom of Hungary" from 1000). It developed as a key economic and administrative centre on the kingdom's frontier. In 1052, German Emperor Henry III undertook a fifth campaign against the Kingdom of Hungary, and besieged Pressburg without success, as the Hungarians sank his supply ships on the Danube river. This strategic position destined the city to be the site of frequent attacks and battles, but also brought it economic development and high political status. It was granted its first known "town privileges" in 1291 by the Hungarian King Andrew III, and was declared a free royal town in 1405 by King Sigismund. In 1436 he authorized the town to use its own coat of arms.

The Kingdom of Hungary was defeated by the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Mohács in 1526. The Ottomans besieged and damaged Pressburg, but failed to conquer it. Owing to Ottoman advances into Hungarian territory, the city was designated the new capital of Hungary in 1536, after becoming part of the Habsburg monarchy and marking the beginning of a new era. The city became a coronation town and the seat of kings, archbishops (1543), the nobility and all major organisations and offices. Between 1536 and 1830, eleven Hungarian kings and queens were crowned at St. Martin's Cathedral.

The 17th century was marked by anti-Habsburg uprisings, fighting with the Ottomans, floods, plagues and other disasters, which diminished the population.  Great epidemics were spreading in Bratislava in 1541-1542, 1552-1553, 1660-1665 and 1678-1681. A terrible outbreak of 1678-1681 left approximately 11.000 casualties among Bratislava's residents (city population was in that time around 30,000 people). The last plague outbreak of Bratislava was between the years 1712-1713

Pressburg flourished during the 18th-century reign of Queen Maria Theresa, becoming the largest and most important town in the Kingdom of Hungary. The population tripled; many new palaces, monasteries, mansions, and streets were built, and the city was the centre of social and cultural life of the region. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart gave a concert in 1762 in the Pálffy Palace. Joseph Haydn performed in 1784 in the Grassalkovich Palace. Ludwig van Beethoven was a guest in 1796 in the Keglevich Palace.

The city started to lose its importance under the reign of Maria Theresa's son Joseph II, especially after the crown jewels were taken to Vienna in 1783 in an attempt to strengthen the relations between Austria and Hungary. Many central offices subsequently moved to Buda, followed by a large segment of the nobility. The first newspapers in Hungarian and Slovak were published here: Magyar hírmondó in 1780, and Presspurske Nowiny in 1783. In the course of the 18th century, the city became a centre for the Slovak national movement.

The city's 19th-century history was closely tied to the major events in Europe. The Peace of Pressburg between Austrian Empire and French Empire was signed here in 1805. Devín Castle was ruined by Napoleon's French troops during an invasion of 1809. In 1825 the Hungarian National Learned Society (the present Hungarian Academy of Sciences) was founded in Pressburg using a donation from István Széchenyi. In 1843 Hungarian was proclaimed the official language in legislation, public administration, and education by the Diet in the city.

As a reaction to the Revolutions of 1848, Ferdinand V signed the so-called April laws, which included the abolition of serfdom, at the Primate's Palace. The city chose the revolutionary Hungarian side, but was captured by the Austrians in December 1848.

Industry developed rapidly in the 19th century. The first horse-drawn railway in the Kingdom of Hungary, from Pressburg to Szentgyörgy (Svätý Jur), was built in 1840. A new line to Vienna using steam locomotives was opened in 1848, and a line to Pest in 1850. Many new industrial, financial and other institutions were founded; for example, the first bank in present-day Slovakia was founded in 1842. The city's first permanent bridge over the Danube, Starý most (Old Bridge), was built in 1891. Between the years 1867-1918, the territory of Pressburg became part of Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Before World War I, the city had a population that was 42% German, 41% Hungarian and 15% Slovak (1910 census, the population was influenced by Magyarization). The first post war census in 1919 declared the city's ethnic composition at 36% German, 33% Slovak and 29% Hungarian but this may have reflected changing self-identification, rather than an exchange of peoples. Many people were bi- or trilingual and multicultural.

After World War I, began dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. U.S. president Woodrow Wilson and the United States played a major role in the establishment of the new Czechoslovak state. In a blatant attempt to appeal to the Allies, American Slovaks proposed rename the city "Wilsonovo mesto" (Wilson City), after Woodrow Wilson.

On 28 October 1918, Czechoslovakia was proclaimed, but its borders were not settled for several months. The dominant Hungarian and German population tried to prevent annexation of the city to Czechoslovakia and declared it a free city,  while the Hungarian Prime Minister Károlyi protested against the "Czech invasion". The Slovak National Assembly meanwhile called it a "defensive action of the Slovaks themselves, to end the anarchy caused by the flight of the Hungarians." The Allies of World War I drew a provisional demarcation line, this was revealed to the Hungarian government on December 23, in the document known as the Vix Note. The Czechoslovak Legion arrived from Italy, began to advance on 30 December and by 2 January 1919, all important civil and military buildings were in Czechoslovak hands. It was the beginning of the conflict, which later continued as Hungarian–Czechoslovak War. The city became the seat of Slovakia's political organs and organizations and became Slovakia's capital on 4 February.

On March 27, 1919, the name Bratislava was officially adopted for the first time to replace the previous Slovak name Prešporok.

At the beginning of August 1919, Czechoslovakia got permission to correct the borders for the strategic reasons, mainly to secure the port and to prevent a potential attack of the Hungarian Army on the town. On the night of 14 August 1919 barefoot Czechoslovak soldiers silently climbed to the Hungarian side of the Starý most (Old Bridge), captured the guards and annexed Petržalka (currently part of Bratislava's 5th district) without a fight. The Paris Peace Conference assigned the area to Czechoslovakia with the aim of creating a bridgehead for the newly created Czechoslovak state for controlling the Danube.

Left without any protection after the retreat of the Hungarian army, many Hungarians were expelled or fled. Czechs and Slovaks moved their households to Bratislava. Education in Hungarian and German was radically reduced in the city. By the 1930 Czechoslovak census, the Hungarian population of Bratislava had decreased to 15.8% (see the Demographics of Bratislava article for more details).

In 1938, Nazi Germany annexed neighbouring Austria in the Anschluss; on 10 October 1938 on the basis of the Munich agreement it also annexed (still-separate from Bratislava) Petržalka and Devín boroughs on ethnic grounds, as these had many ethnic Germans. Petržalka was renamed Engerau. The Starý most (Old Bridge) becomes a border bridge between the Czechoslovakia and Nazi Germany.

Bratislava was declared the capital of the first independent Slovak Republic on March 14, 1939, but the new state quickly fell under Nazi influence. In 1941–1942 and 1944–1945, the new Slovak government cooperated in deporting most of Bratislava's approximately 15,000 Jews; they were transported to concentration camps, where most were killed or died before the end of the war in the Holocaust.

Bratislava,  occupied by German troops, was many times bombarded by the Allies. Major air raid included the bombing of Bratislava and its refinery Apollo on June 16, 1944 by American B-24 bombers of the Fifteenth Air Force with 181 victims On 4 April 1945, Bratislava was taken by troops of the Soviet Red Army 2nd Ukrainian Front during Bratislava–Brno offensive. At the end of World War II, most of Bratislava's ethnic Germans were evacuated by the German authorities. A few returned after the war, but were soon expelled without their properties under the Beneš decrees, part of a widespread expulsion of ethnic Germans from eastern Europe.

After World War II, Slovak Republic lost its so-called independence and was reunified again with the Czech Republic as Czechoslovak Republic, Petržalka (currently part of Bratislava's 5th district) and Devín (currently part of Bratislava's 4th district) was returned to Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, after signing the Peace Treaty of Paris on 10 February 1947, three Hungarian villages, namely Horvátjárfalu (Jarovce), Oroszvár (Rusovce), and Dunacsún (Čunovo) situated south of Bratislava were transferred to Czechoslovakia, in order to form the so-called "Bratislava bridgehead" (currently all three of them are part of Bratislava's 5th district).

After the Communist Party seized power in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, the city became part of the Eastern Bloc. The city annexed new land, and the population rose significantly, becoming 90% Slovak.

Large residential areas consisting of high-rise prefabricated panel buildings, such as those in the Petržalka or Dúbravka borough, were built. The Communist government also built several new grandiose buildings, such as the Slovak Radio Building, Slavín or Kamzík TV Tower. A quarter of Bratislava's Old Town was demolished in the late 1960s for a single project: the bridge of the Slovak National Uprising. To make space for this development, much of the city's centuries-old, historical Jewish quarter was razed, including the 19th-century Moorish-styled Neolog Synagogue.

In 1968, after the unsuccessful Czechoslovak attempt to liberalise the Communist regime, the city was occupied by Warsaw Pact troops. Shortly thereafter, it became capital of the Slovak Socialist Republic, one of the two states of the federalized Czechoslovakia.

Bratislava's dissidents anticipated the fall of Communism with the Bratislava candle demonstration in 1988, and the city became one of the foremost centres of the anti-Communist Velvet Revolution in 1989.

The end of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia in 1989 was followed once again by the country's dissolution, this time into two successor states. Czechoslovak Socialist Republic renamed as Czech and Slovak Federative Republic, the word "socialist" was dropped in the names of the two republics within the federation, the Slovak Socialist Republic renamed as Slovak Republic.

In 1993, Bratislava became second time the capital of the newly formed independent Slovak Republic, following the Velvet Divorce.

Geography

Bratislava is situated in southwestern Slovakia, within the Bratislava Region. Its location on the borders with Austria and Hungary makes it the only national capital that borders two countries. It is only  from the border with Hungary and only  from the Austrian capital Vienna.

The city has a total area of , making it the second-largest city in Slovakia by area (after the township of Vysoké Tatry). Bratislava straddles the Danube River, along which it had developed and for centuries the chief transportation route to other areas. The river passes through the city from the west to the southeast. The Middle Danube basin begins at Devín Gate in western Bratislava. Other rivers are the Morava River, which forms the northwestern border of the city and enters the Danube at Devín, the Little Danube, and the Vydrica, which enters the Danube in the borough of Karlova Ves.

The Carpathian mountain range begins in city territory with the Little Carpathians (Malé Karpaty). The Záhorie and Danubian lowlands stretch into Bratislava. The city's lowest point is at the Danube's surface at  above mean sea level, and the highest point is Devínska Kobyla at . The average altitude is .

Climate
Bratislava has recently shifted into the humid subtropical climate (original/US Köppen–Geiger climate classification Cfa, Trewartha climate classification DOak, USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 7b) with mean annual temperature of around , average temperature of  in the warmest month and  in the coldest month, four distinct seasons and precipitation spread rather evenly throughout the year. It is often windy with a marked variation between hot summers and cold, humid winters. There also can sometimes be a significant difference in weather, between the parts of the city. Bratislava, just like any other city, has an urban heat island effect, but there is no weather station directly in the urban core, so the temperature there can be slightly higher than the official weather station reports. The city is in one of the warmest and driest parts of Slovakia.

Recently, the transitions from winter to summer and summer to winter have been rapid, with short autumn and spring periods. Snow occurs less frequently than previously. Extreme temperatures (1981–2013) – record high: , record low: . Some areas, particularly Devín and Devínska Nová Ves, are vulnerable to floods from the Danube and Morava rivers. New flood protection has been built on both banks.

Location

Cityscape and architecture

The cityscape of Bratislava is characterized by medieval towers and grandiose 20th-century buildings, but it underwent profound changes in a construction boom at the start of the 21st century.

Most historical buildings are concentrated in the Old Town. Bratislava's Town Hall is a complex of three buildings erected in the 14th–15th centuries and now hosts the Bratislava City Museum. Michael's Gate is the only gate that has been preserved from the medieval fortifications, and it ranks among the oldest of the town's buildings; the narrowest house in Europe is nearby. The University Library building, erected in 1756, was used by the Diet of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1802 to 1848. Much of the significant legislation of the Hungarian Reform Era (such as the abolition of serfdom and the foundation of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) was enacted there.

The historic centre is characterized by many baroque palaces. The Grassalkovich Palace, built around 1760, is now the residence of the Slovak president, and the Slovak government now has its seat in the former Archiepiscopal Palace. In 1805, diplomats of emperors Napoleon and Francis II signed the fourth Peace of Pressburg in the Primate's Palace, after Napoleon's victory in the Battle of Austerlitz. Some smaller houses are historically significant; composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel was born in an 18th-century house in the Old Town.

Notable cathedrals and churches include the Gothic St. Martin's Cathedral built in the 13th–16th centuries, which served as the coronation church of the Kingdom of Hungary between 1563 and 1830. The Franciscan Church, dating to the 13th century, has been a place of knighting ceremonies and is the oldest preserved sacral building in the city. The Church of St. Elizabeth, better known as the Blue Church due to its colour, is built entirely in the Hungarian Secessionist style. Bratislava has one surviving functioning synagogue, out of the three major ones existing before the holocaust.

A curiosity is the underground (formerly ground-level) restored portion of the Jewish cemetery where 19th-century Rabbi Moses Sofer is buried, located at the base of the castle hill near the entrance to a tram tunnel. The only military cemetery in Bratislava is Slavín, unveiled in 1960 in honour of Soviet Army soldiers who fell during the liberation of Bratislava in April 1945. It offers a view of the city and the Little Carpathians.

Other prominent 20th-century structures include the Most Slovenského národného povstania (Bridge of the Slovak national uprising) across the Danube featuring a UFO-like tower restaurant, Slovak Radio's inverted-pyramid-shaped headquarters, and the uniquely designed Kamzík TV Tower with an observation deck and rotating restaurant. In the early 21st century, new edifices have transformed the traditional cityscape. At the beginning of the 21st century, a construction boom has spawned new public structures, such as the Most Apollo and a new building of the Slovak National Theatre, as well as private real-estate development.

Bratislava Castle

One of the most prominent structures in the city is Bratislava Castle (Bratislavský hrad), situated on a plateau  above the Danube. The castle hill site has been inhabited since the transitional period between the Stone and Bronze ages and has been the acropolis of a Celtic town, part of the Roman limes Romanus, a huge Slavic fortified settlement, and a political, military and religious centre for Great Moravia. A stone castle was not constructed until the 10th century, when the area was part of the Kingdom of Hungary, however, in the 9th century a pre-romanesque stone basilica, was standing in the area of the hillfort.

The castle was converted into a Gothic anti-Hussite fortress under Sigismund of Luxemburg in 1430, became a Renaissance castle in 1562, and was rebuilt in 1649 in the baroque style. Under Queen Maria Theresa, the castle became a prestigious royal seat. In 1811, the castle was inadvertently destroyed by fire and lay in ruins until the 1950s, when it was rebuilt mostly in its former Theresian style. In the 1940s, it was planned to demolish the castle ruins and replace them with a new university complex. However, it was never realised, and in the 1960s, reconstruction began. Nowadays, it serves ceremonial purposes and as a historical museum of the Slovak National Museum.

Devín Castle

The ruined and recently renovated Devín Castle is in the borough of Devín, on top of a rock where the Morava River, which forms the border between Austria and Slovakia, enters the Danube. It is one of the most important Slovak archaeological sites and contains a museum dedicated to its history. Due to its strategic location, Devín Castle was a very important frontier castle of Great Moravia and the early Hungarian state. It was destroyed by Napoleon's troops in 1809. It is an important symbol of Slovak and Slavic history.

Rusovce
Rusovce mansion, with its English park, is in the Rusovce borough. The house was originally built in the 17th century and was turned into an English neo-Gothic-style mansion in 1841–1844. The borough is also known for the ruins of the Roman military camp Gerulata, part of limes Romanus, a border defence system. Gerulata was built and used between the 1st and 4th centuries AD.

Parks and lakes

Due to its location in the foothills of the Little Carpathians and its riparian vegetation on the Danubian floodplains, Bratislava has forests close to the city centre. The total amount of public green space is , or  per inhabitant.
The largest city park is Horský park (literally, Mountainous Park), in the Old Town. Bratislavský lesný park (Bratislava Forest Park) is located in the Little Carpathians and includes many locales popular among visitors, such as Železná studienka and Koliba. The Forest Park covers an area of , of which 96% is forested mostly with oak and mixed oak/hornbeam forest, and contains original flora and fauna such as European badgers, red foxes, wild boar and red and roe deer. On the right bank of the Danube, in the borough of Petržalka, is Janko Kráľ Park founded in 1774–76. A new city park is planned for Petržalka between the Malý Draždiak and Veľký Draždiak lakes.

Bratislava's zoological park is located in Mlynská dolina, near the headquarters of Slovak Television. The zoo, founded in 1960, currently houses 152 species of animals, including the rare white lion and white tiger. The Botanical Gardens, which belong to Comenius University, can be found on the Danube riverfront and house more than 120 species of domestic and foreign origin.

The city has a number of natural and human-made lakes, most of which are used for recreation. Examples include Štrkovec lake in Ružinov, Kuchajda in Nové Mesto, Zlaté Piesky and the Vajnory lakes in the north-east, and Rusovce lake in the south, which is popular with nudists.

Demographics

From the city's origin until the 19th century, Germans were the dominant ethnic group. By the end of World War I, 42% of the population of Pressburg spoke German as their native language, 40% Hungarian, and 15% Slovak.

After the formation of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, Bratislava remained a multi-ethnic city, but with a different demographic trend. Due to Slovakization, the proportion of Slovaks and Czechs increased in the city, while the proportion of Germans and Hungarians fell. In 1938, 59% of the population were Slovaks or Czechs, while Germans represented 22% and Hungarians 13% of the city's population. The creation of the first Slovak Republic in 1939 brought other changes, most notably the expulsion of many Czechs and the deportation or flight of the Jews during the Holocaust. In 1945, most of the Germans were evacuated. After the restoration of Czechoslovakia, the Beneš decrees (partly revoked in 1948) collectively punished ethnic German and Hungarian minorities by expropriation and deportation to Germany, Austria, and Hungary for their alleged collaborationism with Nazi Germany and Hungary against Czechoslovakia.

The city thereby obtained its clearly Slovak character. Hundreds of citizens were expelled during the communist oppression of the 1950s, with the aim of replacing "reactionary" people with the proletarian class. Since the 1950s, the Slovaks have been the dominant ethnicity in the town, making up around 90% of the city's population.

Politics

Bratislava is the seat of the Slovak parliament, presidency, ministries, supreme court (), and central bank. It is the seat of the Bratislava Region and, since 2002, also of the Bratislava Self-Governing Region. The city also has many foreign embassies and consulates.

The current local government (Mestská samospráva) structure has been in place since 1990. It is composed of a mayor (primátor), a city board (Mestská rada), a city council (Mestské zastupiteľstvo), city commissions (Komisie mestského zastupiteľstva), and a city magistrate's office (Magistrát).

The mayor, based at the Primate's Palace, is the city's top executive officer and is elected to a four-year term of office. The current mayor of Bratislava is Matúš Vallo, who won the election held on October 29, 2022, as an independent candidate. The city council is the city's legislative body, responsible for issues such as budget, local ordinances, city planning, road maintenance, education, and culture.

City Council
The Bratislava City Council is the legislature of the City of Bratislava. It has 45 members. The Council usually convenes once a month and consists of 45 members elected to four-year terms concurrent with the mayor's. Many of the council's executive functions are carried out by the city commission at the council's direction. The city board is a 28-member body composed of the mayor and his deputies, the borough mayors, and up to ten city council members. The board is an executive and supervisory arm of the city council and also serves in an advisory role to the mayor.

Administration
Administratively, Bratislava is divided into five districts: Bratislava I (the city centre), Bratislava II (eastern parts), Bratislava III (north-eastern parts), Bratislava IV (western and northern parts) and Bratislava V (southern parts on the right bank of the Danube, including Petržalka, the most densely populated residential area in Central Europe).

For self-governance purposes, the city is divided into 17 boroughs, each of which has its own mayor (starosta) and council. The number of councillors in each depends on the size and population of the borough. Each of the boroughs coincides with the city's 20 cadastral areas, except for two cases: Nové Mesto is further divided into the Nové Mesto and Vinohrady cadastral areas and Ružinov is divided into Ružinov, Nivy and Trnávka. Further unofficial division recognizes additional quarters and localities.

Economy

The Bratislava Region is the wealthiest and most economically prosperous region in Slovakia, despite being the smallest by area and having the third smallest population of the eight Slovak regions. It accounts for about 26% of the Slovak GDP. According to GDP per capita, Bratislava is the 19th-richest region in the European Union in 2023. The unemployment rate in Bratislava was 2,38% in June 2023. The average monthly salary in the Bratislava region in 2023 was €1 983.

Many governmental institutions and private companies have their headquarters in Bratislava. More than 75% of Bratislava's population works in the service sector, mainly composed of trade, banking, IT, telecommunications, and tourism. The Bratislava Stock Exchange (BSSE), the organiser of the public securities market, was founded on 15 March 1991.

Companies operating predominantly in Bratislava with the highest value added according to the 2018 Trend Top 200 ranking, include the Volkswagen Bratislava Plant, Slovnaft refinery (MOL), Eset (software developer), Asseco (software company), PPC Power (producer of heat and steam) and Trenkwalder personnel agency.

Volkswagen Group took over and expanded the BAZ factory in 1991, and has since considerably expanded production beyond original Skoda Auto models. Currently, 68% of production is focused on SUVs: Audi Q7; VW Touareg; as well as the body and under-chassis of the Porsche Cayenne. Since 2012, production has also included the Volkswagen up!, SEAT Mii and Skoda Citigo.

In recent years, service and high-tech-oriented businesses have prospered in Bratislava. Many global companies, including IBM, Dell, Lenovo, AT&T, SAP, Amazon, Johnson Controls, Swiss Re and Accenture, have built outsourcing and service centres here. Reasons for the influx of multi-national corporations include proximity to Western Europe, skilled labour force and the high density of universities and research facilities. Also Slovak IT companies including ESET, Sygic and Pixel Federation have headquarters in Bratislava.

Other large companies and employers with headquarters in Bratislava include Slovak Telekom, Orange Slovensko, Slovenská sporiteľňa, Tatra banka, Doprastav, Hewlett-Packard Slovakia, Slovnaft, Henkel Slovensko,  Slovenský plynárenský priemysel, Kraft Foods Slovakia, Whirlpool Slovakia, Železnice Slovenskej republiky, AeroMobil, and Tesco Stores Slovak Republic.

The Slovak economy's strong growth in the 2000s has led to a boom in the construction industry, and several major projects have been completed or are planned in Bratislava. Areas attracting developers include the Danube riverfront, where two major projects are already finished: River Park in the Old Town, and Eurovea near the Apollo Bridge. Other locations under development include the areas around the main railway and bus stations, the former industrial zone near the Old Town and in the boroughs of Petržalka, Nové Mesto and Ružinov. In 2010 the city had a balanced budget of €277 million, with one fifth used for investment. Bratislava holds shares in 17 companies directly, including the city's public transport company Dopravný podnik Bratislava, the waste collection and disposal company named OLO (Odvoz a likvidácia odpadu), and the water utility. The city also manages municipal organisations such as the city police (Mestská polícia), Bratislava City Museum and ZOO Bratislava.

Tourism

In 2022 a total of 927,950 people came to visit Bratislava and spent there 1,719,409 nights. These were most commonly 65% foreigners. Bratislava attracts predominantly visitors from the neighboring and nearby countries - Czech Republic, Germany, Austria and Poland. The top 5 is closed by visitors from the UK. Bratislava offered 272 accommodation facilities with 10,338 rooms in 2022. A  considerable share of visits is made by those who visit Bratislava for a single day, but their exact number is not available.

Among other factors, the growth of low-cost airline flights to Bratislava, led by Ryanair, has led to conspicuous stag parties, primarily from the UK. While these are a boom to the city's tourism industry, cultural differences and vandalism have led to concern by local officials. Reflecting the popularity of rowdy parties in Bratislava in the early to mid-2000s, the city was a setting in the 2004 comedy film Eurotrip, which was actually filmed in the city of Prague, the Czech Republic.

Shopping

Bratislava has eight major shopping centres: Aupark, Avion Shopping Park, Bory Mall, Central, Eurovea, Nivy Centrum, Vivo! (formerly Polus City Center) and Shopping Palace.

A month before Christmas the Main Square in Bratislava is illuminated by a Christmas tree and the Christmas market stalls are officially opened. Around 100 booths are opened every year. It is opened most of the day as well as in the evening.

Culture
Bratislava is the cultural heart of Slovakia. Owing to its historical multi-cultural character, local culture is influenced by various ethnic and religious groups, including Germans, Slovaks, Hungarians, and Jews. Bratislava enjoys numerous theatres, museums, galleries, concert halls, cinemas, film clubs, and foreign cultural institutions.

Performing arts

Bratislava is the seat of the Slovak National Theatre, housed in two buildings. The first is a Neo-Renaissance theatre building situated in the Old Town at the end of Hviezdoslav Square. The new building, opened to the public in 2007, is on the riverfront. The theatre has three ensembles: opera, ballet and drama. Smaller theatres include the New Scene Theatre, the Astorka Korzo '90 Theatre, the Arena Theatre, the L+S Studio, the Naive Theatre of Radošina and the Bratislava Puppet Theatre.

Music in Bratislava flourished in the 18th century and was closely linked to Viennese musical life. Mozart visited the town at the age of six. Among other notable composers who visited or lived in the town were Haydn, Liszt, Bartók and Beethoven. It is also the birthplace of the composers Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Ernő Dohnányi, and Franz Schmidt. Bratislava is home to both the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and the chamber orchestra, Capella Istropolitana. The city hosts several annual festivals, such as the Bratislava Music Festival and Bratislava Jazz Days. During the summer, various musical events take place as part of the Bratislava Cultural Summer at Bratislava Castle. Apart from musical festivals, it is possible to hear music ranging from underground to well known pop stars.

Bratislava is home to two of Slovakia's national folk dance ensembles, Lúčnica and Slovenský ľudový umelecký kolektív (SĽUK).

Museums and galleries

The Slovak National Museum (Slovenské národné múzeum), founded in 1961, has its headquarters in Bratislava on the riverfront in the Old Town, along with the Natural History Museum, which is one of its subdivisions. It is the largest cultural institution in Slovakia, and manages 16 specialized museums in Bratislava and beyond. The Bratislava City Museum (Múzeum mesta Bratislavy), established in 1868, is the oldest museum in continuous operation in Slovakia. Its primary goal is to chronicle Bratislava's history in various forms from the earliest periods using historical and archaeological collections. It offers permanent displays in eight specialised museums.

The Slovak National Gallery, founded in 1948, offers the most extensive network of galleries in Slovakia. Two displays in Bratislava are next to one another at Esterházy Palace (Esterházyho palác) and the Water Barracks (Vodné kasárne) on the Danube riverfront in the Old Town. The Bratislava City Gallery, founded in 1961, is the second-largest Slovak gallery of its kind. The gallery offers permanent displays at Pálffy Palace (Pálffyho palác) and Mirbach Palace (Mirbachov palác), in the Old Town. Danubiana Art Museum, one of the youngest art museums in Europe, is near Čunovo waterworks.

Media

As the national capital, Bratislava is home to national and many local media outlets. Notable TV stations based in the city include Radio and Television of Slovakia (Rozhlas a televízia Slovenska), Markíza, JOJ and TA3. RTVS radio's headquarters has its seat in the centre, and many Slovak commercial radio stations are based in the city. National newspapers based in Bratislava include SME, Pravda, Nový čas, Hospodárske noviny and the English-language The Slovak Spectator. Two news agencies are headquartered there: the News Agency of the Slovak Republic (TASR, Tlačová agentúra Slovenskej republiky) and the Slovak News Agency (SITA, Slovenská tlačová agentúra).

Sport

Various sports and sports teams have a long tradition in Bratislava, with many teams and individuals competing in Slovak and international leagues and competitions.

Football is currently represented by the only club playing in the top Slovak football league, the Fortuna Liga. ŠK Slovan Bratislava, founded in 1919, has its home ground at the Tehelné pole stadium. ŠK Slovan is the most successful football club in Slovak history, being the only club from the former Czechoslovakia to win the European football competition the Cup Winners' Cup, in 1969.
FC Petržalka akadémia is the oldest of Bratislava's football clubs, founded in 1898, and is based at Stadium FC Petržalka 1898 in Petržalka (formerly at Pasienky in Nové Mesto and Štadión Petržalka in Petržalka). They are currently the only Slovak team to win at least one match in the UEFA Champions League group stage, with a 5–0 win over Celtic FC in the qualifying round being the most well-known, alongside a 3–2 win over FC Porto. Before then FC Košice in the 1997–98 season lost all six matches, despite being the first Slovak side since independence to play in the competition.

In 2010 Artmedia were relegated from the Corgon Liga under their new name of MFK Petržalka, finishing 12th and bottom. FC Petržalka akadémia currently competes in 5. liga after bankruptcy in summer 2014. Another known club from the city is FK Inter Bratislava. Founded in 1945, they have their home ground at Stadium ŠKP Inter Dúbravka in Dúbravka, (formerly at Štadión Pasienky) and currently plays in the 3. liga. There are many more clubs with long tradition and successful history despite the lack of success in last years, e.g. LP Domino Bratislava currently playing in 4. liga; FK Rača Bratislava competing in the 3. liga as well as Inter; FK ŠKP Inter Dúbravka Bratislava, following ŠKP Devín (successful team from the 1990s) and partially following the original Inter (original Inter bankrupted in 2009, sold the Corgoň Liga license to FK Senica and legally merged with FC ŠKP Dúbravka; current Inter has taken over the tradition, name, colours, fans, etc., but legally is no successor of the original Inter); FC Tatran Devín, the club that was successful mostly at youth level and merged with ŠKP Bratislava in 1995; MŠK Iskra Petržalka, playing under the name ŠK Iskra Matadorfix Bratislava in the former 1st League (today 2nd) in 1997/98.

Bratislava is home to three winter sports arenas: Ondrej Nepela Winter Sports Stadium, V. Dzurilla Winter Sports Stadium, and Dúbravka Winter Sports Stadium. The HC Slovan Bratislava ice hockey team has represented Bratislava from the 2012–13 season in the Kontinental Hockey League. Slovnaft Arena, a part of Ondrej Nepela Winter Sports Stadium, is home to HC Slovan. The Ice Hockey World Championships in 1959 and 1992 were played in Bratislava, and the 2011 World Championship were held in Bratislava and Košice, for which a new arena was built. The city also played host to the World Championship in 2019.

The Čunovo Water Sports Centre is a whitewater slalom and rafting area, close to the Gabčíkovo dam. It hosts several international and national canoe and kayak competitions annually.

In 1966, Bratislava named its new multi-sports stadium after tennis player Ladislav Hecht.

The National Tennis Centre, which includes Aegon Arena, hosts various cultural, sporting and social events. Several Davis Cup matches have been played there, including the 2005 Davis Cup final. The city is represented in the top Slovak leagues in women's and men's basketball, women's handball and volleyball, and men's water polo. The Devín–Bratislava National run is the oldest athletic event in Slovakia, and the Bratislava City Marathon has been held annually since 2006. A race track is located in Petržalka, where horse racing and dog racing events and dog shows are held regularly.

Bratislava is also the centre of rugby union in Slovakia.

Education and science

The first university in Bratislava, in the Kingdom of Hungary (and also in the territory of present-day Slovakia) was Universitas Istropolitana, founded in 1465 by King Matthias Corvinus. It was closed in 1490 after his death.

Bratislava is the seat of the largest university (Comenius University, 27,771 students), the largest technical university (Slovak University of Technology, 18,473 students), and the oldest art schools (the Academy of Performing Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts and Design) in Slovakia. Other institutions of tertiary education are the public University of Economics and the first private college in Slovakia, City University of Seattle. In total, about 56,000 students attend university in Bratislava.

There are 65 public primary schools, nine private primary schools and ten religious primary schools. Overall, they enroll 25,821 pupils. The city's system of secondary education (some middle schools and all high schools) consists of 39 gymnasia with 16,048 students, 37 specialized high schools with 10,373 students, and 27 vocational schools with 8,863 students (data ).

The Slovak Academy of Sciences is also based in Bratislava. However, the city is one of the few European capitals to have neither an observatory nor a planetarium. The nearest observatory is in Modra,  away, and the nearest planetarium is in Hlohovec,  away.

Transport

The geographical position of Bratislava in Central Europe has long made it a natural crossroads for international trade traffic.

Public transport in Bratislava is managed by Dopravný podnik Bratislava, a city-owned company. The transport system is known as Mestská hromadná doprava (MHD, Municipal Mass Transit) and employs buses, trams, and trolleybuses. Most of the Bratislava public transport is coated in a typical color combination of red and black.

Bratislava is also part of an integrated system, IDS BK, connecting city public transport with other transport companies in the Bratislava region. Traveling with a single ticket is possible throughout the system network, both in Bratislava and to the nearby villages and cities, including 3 other districts of Senec, Malacky, and Pezinok.

As a rail hub, the city has direct connections to Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, Croatia, Slovenia and the rest of Slovakia. Bratislava-Petržalka railway station and Bratislava Main station are the principal railway stations.

Daily trains and buses from Bratislava to Vienna run multiple times every hour, with the Wien Hbf train station serving Bratislava as well, with more connections throughout Europe, opening possibilities for a travel to Italy and France with a quick change of trains in Vienna.

The main bus station (Autobusová stanica or Autobusová stanica Nivy) is located at Mlynské Nivy, east of the city centre, and offers both bus connections to cities in Slovakia and international bus lines. A new bus station attached to a shopping mall, administration centre, and Bratislava's tallest skyscraper, Nivy Tower, was opened on the 30th of September 2021. Bus station lays underground and its design is inspired by airport terminals. The waiting area offers enough space and comfort to wait for the bus.

The motorway system provides direct access to Brno in the Czech Republic, Vienna in Austria, Budapest in Hungary, Trnava, and other points in Slovakia. The A6 motorway between Bratislava and Vienna was opened in November 2007.

The Port of Bratislava is one of the two international river ports in Slovakia. The port provides access to the Black Sea via the Danube and to the North Sea through the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal. Additionally, tourist lines operate from Bratislava's passenger port, including routes to Devín, Vienna, and elsewhere. In Bratislava there are currently six bridges standing over the Danube (ordered by the flow of the river): Most Lafranconi (Lafranconi Bridge), Most SNP (Bridge of the Slovak National Uprising, previously called Nový most or New bridge) with the famous UFO Tower, Starý most (The Old Bridge), Most Apollo (Apollo Bridge), Prístavný most (The Harbor Bridge) and Lužný most (The Floodplain bridge).

Bratislava's M. R. Štefánik Airport is the main international airport in Slovakia. The airport is located  north-east of the city centre, with fast connections served by the city public transport. It serves civil and governmental, scheduled and unscheduled domestic and international flights. The current runways support the landing for all common types of aircraft. It served 2,024,000 passengers in 2007. Bratislava is also served by the Vienna International Airport located  west of the city centre. It is common for Bratislava residents to use Vienna airport often, as it offers more variety and can be reached under 60 minutes from Bratislava with a car.

International relations

Twin towns – sister cities
Bratislava is twinned with:

 Brno, Czech Republic
 Székesfehérvár, Hungary
 Kraków, Poland
 Warsaw, Poland
 Perugia, Italy (1962)
 Ljubljana, Slovenia (1967)
 Yerevan, Armenia (2001)
 Larnaca, Cyprus (1989)
 Turku, Finland (1976)
 Bremen, Germany (1989)
 Alexandria, Egypt
 Kyiv, Ukraine
 Cleveland, United States

* Numbers in parentheses list the year of twinning. The first agreement was signed with the city of Perugia in Italy on 18 July 1962.

Notable people

Honorary citizens
People who have received the honorary citizenship of Bratislava are:

Image gallery

See also
 List of municipalities and towns in Slovakia
 List of streets in Bratislava
 List of fountains in Bratislava

Notes

References

Genealogical resources
The records for genealogical research are available at the state archive "Statny Archiv in Bratislava, Slovakia"
 Roman Catholic church records (births/marriages/deaths): 1601–1897 (parish A)
 Lutheran church records (births/marriages/deaths): 1606–1919 (parish A)

External links

Official sites
 Official website of the City of Bratislava
 Official Tourism and Travel Guide to Bratislava
 Official Slovak National Tourism Portal

Tourism and living information
 Public urban transport in Bratislava

Capitals in Europe
Cities and towns in Slovakia
Populated places on the Danube
907 establishments
Populated places established in the 10th century

Bratislava


The Interpretation Act 1850 (13 & 14 Vict. c. 21) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed in 1850 that simplified the language that was used in statutes. It was also known as Lord Brougham's Act, and its long title was An Act for shortening the Language used in Acts of Parliament.

The Act devised the current system of dividing legislation into sections which are automatically substantive enactments, and also made various other provisions for interpreting other statutes. For example, it stated that the masculine includes the feminine (thus enabling "he" to be written instead of "he or she"), unless expressly indicated otherwise.

It has also been extended in its application to former colonies such as New Zealand.

It has since been superseded by other Interpretation Acts, including the Interpretation Act 1978.

References

1850 in British law
United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1850

Interpretation Act 1850


The Arte da Lingoa Canarim, the grammar of the Konkani language, was composed by the 16th-century English Jesuit priest Father Thomas Stephens, thus making Konkani the first among the modern Indian languages to have its grammar codified and described. The system was expanded upon by Diogo Ribeiro and four other Jesuits and printed in Rachol (located in the Indian state of Goa) in the year 1640. A second edition was then developed and introduced in 1857 by J.H. da Cunha Rivara, who possessed a great passion for Konkani. Consequently, three versions of the Arte exist:

Arte da lingoa Canari. MS held by the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
Arte da lingoa Canarim, composed by Padre Thomaz Estevão and Padre Diogo Ribeiro of the Company of Jesus & amended by other Padres of the same company. 1640.
Grammatica da Lingua Concani, composed by Padre Thomaz Estevão of the Company of Jesus and edited by J.H. da Cunha Rivara. Nova Goa: Imprensa Nacional. 1857.

Canarim
Konkani has been known by a variety of names: canarim, concanim, gomantaki, bramana and goani. It is called amchi bhas ("our language") by native speakers and govi, or Goenchi bhas, by others. Learned Marathi speakers tend to call it gomantaki.

The name canarim or lingua canarim, which is how Thomas Stephens himself refers to it in the title of his famous grammar, has always been intriguing. It is possible that the term is derived from the Persian word for coast, kinara; if so, it would be means "the language of the coast." The problem is that this term overlaps with Kanarese or Kannada. It is therefore not surprising to find Mariano Saldanha calling absurd the appellation lingua canarim, since the language of Goa, being derived from Sanskrit, has nothing to do with Kannada, which is a Dravidian language. The missionaries, who certainly travelled to Kanara as well, must have realized the infelicity of the term, but, not being philologists, continued to follow the current practice. Thus Stephens speaks of the lingua canarim, and a Portuguese missionary called his work Arte Canarina da lingoa do Norte, referring to the Konkanized Marathi of the northern provinces of Bassein, Bandra, and Bombay.

All the authors, however, recognized in Goa two forms of the language: the plebeian, called canarim, and the more regular, used by the educated classes, called lingua canarim brámana or simply brámana de Goa. Since the latter was the preferred choice of the Europeans (and also of other castes) for writing, sermons and religious purposes, it was this that became the norm for all the grammars, including that of Stephens'. The licence of the Ordinary given to his work refers to it as "arte da lingua canarin bramana". For his Purāṇa, Stephens preferred to use Marathi, and gives explicit notice of his choice, even though he also notes that he mixes this with the local "language of the Brahmins" so as to make his work more accessible. He was therefore well aware of the difference between Marathi and what he chose to call canarim.

References

Konkani
Grammar books
1640 books

Arte da Lingoa Canarim


James J. "Jim" Laski (born 1954) was the City Clerk of Chicago, Illinois from 1995–2006.  The former congressional aid and city alderman resigned from the City Clerk's office following his indictment for obstruction of justice due to his involvement in the city's scandal-plagued Hired Truck Program.  After serving a prison sentence, Laski became a controversial talk-radio host for a program that was broadcast on two Chicago-area radio stations.  He also wrote a book about his experiences in Chicago politics and federal prison.

Personal life
Laski grew up on the southwest side of Chicago, a lifelong resident of Chicago's 23rd Ward.  He attended St. Laurence High School and graduated with a degree in political science from Lewis University. He graduated from Northern Illinois University College of Law in 1978, and quickly volunteered his services to then 23rd Ward Alderman, William O. "Bill" Lipinski.

Political career

By 1988 Laski was chief of staff of the joint Democrat Service Office for the city's southwest side, and a personal aid to Lipinski, by then a United States congressman. In 1991 he was appointed city alderman of the 23rd Ward to fill the vacancy created when his predecessor, Alderman William Krystyniak, was appointed personnel director of the Cook County Highway Department.  While a member of the city council he had a falling out with his mentor, Lipinski, over a proposed tax increase. Laski's publicly stated position on the issue, however, helped him in 1995 to be popularly elected as Chicago City Clerk, the second-highest ranking elected position in Chicago after the mayor's office.  He had come into the office as a 'reformer' following his several times elected predecessor, Walter Kozubowski's, conviction in a ghost payroll scheme. Laski was re-elected to the post in 1999 and 2003.

Indicted
Laski resigned from his position in February 2006, —and gave up his law license— after being indicted in January of that year for soliciting bribes and  obstructing justice regarding his involvement in the City of Chicago's Hired Truck Program. Federal agents had caught him on tape encouraging witnesses to lie to a grand jury and deny that they had been giving him anywhere from $500 to $1,000 a month in cash bribes to continue getting business from the program.  In March 2006, Laski pleaded guilty to obstruction.  In June 2006, Laski was sentenced to 27 months in prison.  Laski reported to the Federal Correctional Institution in Morgantown, West Virginia to begin serving his sentence on September 11, 2006, where he served 11 months of his sentence.  Laski then served an additional six months at a halfway house.

Radio personality
Following his release, Laski was hired on as a prime time weekday radio personality at WGN AM 720 in Chicago.  The station's website described the host as "a rebel and maverick in political circles taking on the tough issues and fighting the powers that be in City Hall ... his flair for speaking his mind leaves no one guessing where Jim stands on the issues."  Laski's show, however, was discontinued after eighteen months.  In early 2013, Laski hosted a self-produced —but relatively short-lived— weekend talk show, the Laski Files, on WCPT AM 820 out of Willow Springs, a suburb of Chicago.

Author
Laski wrote a book detailing his experience in the City Clerk's office and his later imprisonment entitled, My Fall From Grace – City Hall to Prison Walls.

References

External links
 Federal Charges Unsealed Against City Clerk James Laski and A Laski Political Worker In Probe of City's Hired Truck Program; January 13, 2006; Press Release [PDF download]; accessed October 2016

1954 births
Living people
Lawyers from Chicago
Writers from Chicago
Chicago City Council members
Illinois Democrats
Lewis University alumni
Northern Illinois University alumni
Illinois politicians convicted of crimes
Radio personalities from Chicago
City clerks of Chicago

James Laski


Luther Burbank's Gold Ridge Experiment Farm is the official name of the  that remain of the farm originally purchased in 1885 by famed plant breeder Luther Burbank (1849-1926) in an area of Sebastopol, California, formerly known as the "Gold Ridge District". To these , Burbank added  in 1904 and  in 1906 until, in 1923, failing health compelled him to sell  of his holdings. Burbank died in 1926.

In 1974, Burbank's widow Elizabeth Waters Burbank (1888-1977) donated the remaining  to the Sebastopol Area Housing Corporation for the purpose of erecting low-income, senior, and disabled housing units with the stipulation that the  parcel containing the "Caretaker's Cottage" (that had been constructed a year or two after an older cottage on the property was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake), the barn, the potting shed (destroyed by fire in the late 1960s) and over 250 living specimens of Burbank's work be set aside and left undisturbed as a historical and horticultural area, dedicated to Burbank, to be studied and enjoyed by future generations. Presently owned by the City of Sebastopol, it is administrated by the Western Sonoma County Historical Society and maintained entirely by volunteers.

History of Gold Ridge Farm
Faced with the need for more room in which to conduct his experiments in perennial plants, trees and shrubs than could be accommodated by his nursery at his home and gardens in Santa Rosa, Burbank purchased Gold Ridge Farm chiefly because of its subtle variations in environments, exposures and elevations. This allowed him to conduct experiments on plants that varied greatly in characteristics. In its heyday, some estimates put the number of Burbank's on-going plant experiments at Gold Ridge Farm at over 60,000 and tended by a crew of as many as 15 to 20 workers.

After Burbank's death in 1926, the remaining extant Burbank plants were cataloged by representatives from Stark Brothers Nursery in Missouri (an influential former client of Burbank's) after which the farm fell into disuse and disrepair until the mid-1970s.

The Western Sonoma County Historical Society was formed in Sebastopol at that time from the ranks of local  volunteers with the original mission of assuring the preservation and maintenance of Burbank's Gold Ridge Farm. This mission has expanded to presently include the West Sonoma County Museum (headquartered at the old train depot building in downtown Sebastopol), the Sebastopol Archives and the Triggs Reference Room and genealogical archives.

Today, Luther Burbank's Gold Ridge Experiment Farm is both a horticultural and historical museum where the public can, by docent or self-guided tour, view literally hundreds of the "living legacies" of the man once called "The Plant Wizard".

Location
Gold Ridge Farm is located at 7777 Bodega Avenue (about  west of Main Street) in Sebastopol and is open to the public. The Western Sonoma County Historical Society and the West County Museum are located at 261 South Main Street in Sebastopol.

See also
Luther Burbank Home and Gardens

References

External links

Botanical gardens in California
Museums in Sonoma County, California
Historical society museums in California
History of Sonoma County, California
Historic farms in the United States
Parks in Sonoma County, California
Buildings and structures in Sonoma County, California
Farms on the National Register of Historic Places in California
Gold Ridge Farm
Tourist attractions in Sonoma County, California
Sebastopol, California


Korbinian Brodmann (17 November 1868 – 22 August 1918) was a German neuropsychiatrist who is known for mapping the cerebral cortex and defining 52 distinct regions, known as Brodmann areas, based on their cytoarchitectonic (histological) characteristics.

Life and career
Brodmann was born in Liggersdorf, Province of Hohenzollern, Kingdom of Prussia. He studied medicine in Munich, Würzburg, Berlin, and Freiburg, where he received his medical diploma in 1895. Subsequently he studied at the Medical School in the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, and then worked in the University Clinic in Munich. He received a doctor of medicine degree from the University of Leipzig in 1898, with a thesis on chronic ependymal sclerosis. From 1900 to 1901, Brodmann also worked in the Psychiatric Clinic at the University of Jena, with Ludwig Binswanger, and in the Municipal Mental Asylum in Frankfurt. There, he met Alois Alzheimer, who was influential in his decision to pursue basic neuroscience research.

Following this, Brodmann started to work in 1901 with Cécile and Oskar Vogt at the private institute Neurobiologische Zentralstation in Berlin, and in 1902 in the Neurobiological Laboratory of the University of Berlin. In 1915 he joined the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Hirnforschung, now known as the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research.

In 1909, Brodmann published his original research on cortical cytoarchitectonics in the monograph Vergleichende Lokalisationslehre der Großhirnrinde (Localisation in the cerebral cortex). Famously, this book contained the first map of the cerebral cortex based on regional variations in structure. These regions would later become known as Brodmann areas.

After completing his work in Berlin, Brodmann joined the University of Tübingen. There, he was habilitated and made a full professor in 1913. From 1910 to 1916, he served as physician and chairman of the Anatomical Laboratory at the University Psychiatric Clinic. Brodmann moved to Halle in 1916 to work in the Nietleben Municipal Hospital. Finally, in 1918, he accepted an invitation from the University of Munich to direct the group of histology at Psychiatric Research Center.

Brodmann died in Munich rather suddenly of a generalized septic infection following pneumonia, at just under 50 years of age on 22 August 1918.

Brodmann areas

The cortical areas that Brodmann described and located are now usually referred to as Brodmann areas. There are a total of 52 areas grouped into 11 histological areas. Brodmann used a variety of criteria to map the human brain, including attention to both gross anatomical features and cortical micro-structures. Brodmann postulated that areas with different structures performed different functions. Indeed, some of these areas were later associated to nervous functions, such as the following:
 Brodmann area 41 and 42 in the temporal lobe, related to hearing
 Brodmann area 45 and 44 overlap with the Broca's area for language in humans
 Brodmann area 1, 2, and 3 in the postcentral gyrus of the parietal lobe (the somatosensory region)
 Brodmann area 4 in the precentral gyrus of the frontal lobe (the primary motor area)
 Brodmann area 17 and 18 in the occipital lobe (the primary visual areas).

His work to characterize brain cytoarchitecture was strongly influenced by Oskar Vogt, who postulated over 200 distinct areas in the brain. In modern science, the regions that were identified by Brodmann are frequently referred to by their function, rather than by the number Brodmann assigned to them. However, in some situations, the use of Brodmann numbers persists.

References

External links

 Korbinian Brodmann (1868-1918) article by Professor Laurence Garey
 microscope for brain sections from the University of Tübingen (1911), attributed to Korbinian Brodmann's work (German language)
 Korbinian Brodmann WhoNamedIt

1868 births
1918 deaths
People from Konstanz (district)
German neurologists
German neuroscientists
History of neuroscience
Deaths from sepsis
People from the Province of Hohenzollern
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni
Academic staff of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
University of Würzburg alumni
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
University of Freiburg alumni
Leipzig University alumni
Academic staff of the University of Tübingen
Deaths from pneumonia in Germany

Korbinian Brodmann


Marmalade is a topping, like a jam or jelly, that is usually made with oranges. Marmalade can also be made from lemons, limes, grapefruits, or a combination of citrus fruits.

The word Marmalade comes from the Galician word "marmelada" meaning
quince jam.

Related pages
 Marmalade (Candy)

Other websites

Spreads

Marmalade


Moriarty Air Force Station (ADC ID: P-51) is a closed United States Air Force General Surveillance Radar station.  It is located  east-northeast of Moriarty, New Mexico.  It was closed in 1961.

History
In late 1951 Air Defense Command selected this mountainous site near Moriarty, New Mexico as one of twenty-eight radar stations built as part of the second segment of the permanent radar surveillance network. Prompted by the start of the Korean War, on July 11, 1950, the Secretary of the Air Force asked the Secretary of Defense for approval to expedite construction of the second segment of the permanent network. Receiving the Defense Secretary's approval on July 21, the Air Force directed the Corps of Engineers to proceed with construction.

On 1 January 1951 the 768th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron was activated at Moriarty Air Force Station by the 540th Aircraft Control and Warning Group, and initially the station functioned as a Ground-Control Intercept (GCI) and warning station.  As a GCI station, the squadron's role was to guide interceptor aircraft toward unidentified intruders picked up on the unit's radar scopes.    The station consisted of 54 buildings; 1 office building, 5 storage buildings, 5 barracks, 19 family housing units and 24 other buildings.   The station had a branch of the Kirtland AFB BX, a theater, several service clubs, a library, swimming pool and tennis court.  A housing area was built for married personnel.

Initially operating an AN/CPS-5 radar, by September 1952 the 768th AC&W Squadron operated AN/FPS-3 and AN/FPS-5 radars from the station. Six years later an AN/FPS-20 radar replaced the AN/FPS-3 search radar, and an AN/FPS-6 performed height-finding duties.

In 1960 Moriarty Air Force Station was transferred to the Federal Aviation Administration pending inactivation of the 768th, which was discontinued on 1 June 1961.  The facility was turned over to the General Services Administration for disposal in 1962 and was turned over to the State of New Mexico and several private owners.

Today what was the station is abandoned, and owned by the State of New Mexico.  The remaining buildings are overgrown with vegetation and unused.  It is used by the State Highway and Transportation Department for material storage and solid waste disposal. It contains misc equipment such as concrete barriers, old signs, etc. but no indications that they visit the grounds frequently.  The remainder of the former station is used for livestock grazing.

The remains of Moriarty Air Force Station consist of six buildings still standing on the site.  The buildings are gutted and in a decrepit state due to neglect and vandalism. All other buildings have been torn down.  The streets remain on the site in very poor repair.

Air Force units and assignments
Units:
 768th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, Activated 1 January 1951 at Moriarty Air Force Station
 Inactivated on 1 June 1986

Assignments:
 540th Aircraft Control and Warning Group, 1 January 1951
 34th Air Division, 1 May 1951
 Albuquerque Air Defense Sector, 1 January 1960
 Oklahoma City Air Defense Sector, 15 September 1960 – 1 June 1961

See also
 United States general surveillance radar stations

References

  A Handbook of Aerospace Defense Organization  1946–1980,  by Lloyd H. Cornett and Mildred W. Johnson, Office of History, Aerospace Defense Center, Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado
 Winkler, David F. (1997), Searching the skies: the legacy of the United States Cold War defense radar program. Prepared for United States Air Force Headquarters Air Combat Command.
 Information for Moriarty AFS, NM

External links

Installations of the United States Air Force in New Mexico
Radar stations of the United States Air Force
Aerospace Defense Command military installations
Military installations closed in 1961
1951 establishments in New Mexico
Military installations established in 1951
1961 disestablishments in New Mexico

Moriarty Air Force Station


Suzie Agnes-Ida d'Auvergne  (1942 – 18 August 2014) was a Saint Lucian barrister and jurist. She was a High Court Judge of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court from 1990 to 2004.

D'Auvergne obtained a law degree at the University of London in 1972. She began her private law practice in 1975 and became a magistrate in 1979. She was Director of Public Prosecutions from 1982 to 1988 when she was appointed the first Solicitor General of Saint Lucia.

In 1990, d'Auvergne was appointed a High Court Judge of Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court. She retired in 2004. She was also a judge of the International Labour Organization Administrative Tribunal.

D'Auvergne received the Saint Lucia Medal of Honour for outstanding service in the cause of justice in 2004. In 2006, she was awarded the Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) for service to the judiciary.

D'Auvergne died at Tapion Hospital in Castries on 18 August 2014.

References

1942 births
2014 deaths
Alumni of the University of London
Companions of the Order of St Michael and St George
Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court justices
Recipients of the Order of Saint Lucia
Saint Lucian judges
20th-century Saint Lucian lawyers
Saint Lucian women lawyers
Saint Lucian judges of international courts and tribunals
20th-century women lawyers

Suzie d'Auvergne


Breath is the twentieth book and eighth novel by Australian author Tim Winton. His first novel in seven years, it was published in 2008, in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the US, Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany.

Plot summary
The novel is set in a small Western Australian logging village named Sawyer, near the fictional coastal town of Angelus, which has featured in several of Winton's works, including Shallows and The Turning. It is narrated by Bruce "Pikelet" Pike, a divorced, middle-aged paramedic, and takes the form of a long flashback in which he remembers childhood experiences of friendship with another boy, of surfing under the mentorship of an older surfing champion, and of repeated statutory rape by the older surfer's wife. The main events of the novel takes place in the 1970s.

Before the main events of the story take place, the opening chapter depicts a scene of two paramedics responding to an emergency call. The older paramedic, who is the narrator, immediately recognises that the boy that they have been called to help is dead as a result of hanging himself. The paramedic consoles the disconsolate mother who asks him how she will explain his death. After leaving, the younger paramedic says that it was the first suicide she had encountered, but the narrator says that it was not a suicide, without explaining that it had been an accident resulting from an autoerotic asphyxiation.

The story then shifts to the narrator's childhood. The narrator, Bruce "Pikelet" Pike, recounts his boyhood friendship with Ivan "Loonie" Loon. They first meet when eleven-year-old Pikelet stumbles across Loonie pretending to drown in a river in order to frighten a young family sitting nearby. The boys bond over their love for dangerous stunts, despite being the polar opposites of each other. They form a tight friendship and spend the majority of their time together. The two boys witness a group of young men surfing a gigantic wave and are inspired to pick up surfing as a hobby. They then meet a professional surfer named Bill "Sando" Sanderson, who encourages them to pursue this ambition and offers to teach them both how to surf. The trio bond quickly and the boys are constantly over at Sando's house, which is a treehouse in the middle of the Australian bush, shared by Sando's American wife Eva Sanderson.

After teaching them the basics, Sando quickly encourages the two now-teenage boys to attempt extremely dangerous stunts in the ocean, using their strong desire for his approval to drive a rivalry between them. At first, Pikelet has plenty of fun with the others, though he soon becomes tired of how Sando pits Loonie and himself against each other - and how the older man shows favouritism towards Loonie. The two boys' friendship sours when Loonie breaks a bone and is unable to join the others as they take on a very large wave, Old Smokey, which lies a mile from the shore, causing Loonie to become jealous of Pikelet and treat him with increasing hostility. Once his arm heals, the three take on an even more ambitious wave, Nautilus, which lies three miles offshore and breaks on an extremely shallow shoal. However, once out at sea, while Sando and Loonie both attempt the wave, Pikelet flatly refuses, seeing it as far too dangerous, which causes the other two to begin to see Pikelet as more cowardly. The rift between them is cemented when Sando invites Loonie on a trip to Bali with him, but purposely excludes Pikelet. This puts a heavy strain on Pikelet and Loonie's friendship.

While Sando and Loonie are away, Pikelet surfs Old Smokey by himself. He has one successful ride, which reinvigorates his battered self-confidence, but on the second attempt he falls and suffers multiple hold-downs from a series of waves, losing his board and having to swim home as a result. Sando, after returning to Australia, hears of Pikelet's actions and congratulates Pikelet. Loonie finds out too and asks Pikelet begrudgingly if it is true, and Pikelet confirms that it is. Pikelet then realises that their friendship is over and watches the now sixteen-year-old Loonie walk away without saying goodbye, not knowing that he would never see Loonie again.

Sando and Loonie depart again for a more extended trip, which takes them back to Indonesia, and then to various places around the Pacific. While the others are gone, Pikelet finds comfort in Eva, and discovers that she was an elite skier whose career came to an abrupt halt after she crippled one of her legs. Eva is psychologically tortured by watching her husband continue to do what he loves every day while she is forced to wither away. Eva eventually initiates a secretive, sexual relationship with Pikelet, who is underage. Their relationship evolves into Eva requesting Pikelet to asphyxiate her during sex. Pikelet eventually notices that Eva is pregnant. Pikelet asks if he is the father and Eva implies that he is not, though there is ambiguity in this response.

Sando eventually returns to Australia, but Loonie does not return with him. Sando tells Pikelet that Loonie abandoned him on the trip. Sando also tells Pikelet that he is going to be a father and that he and Eva are moving back to the United States to raise the baby. After an accident at work, Pikelet's father passes away. At the same time of Pikelet's father's death, the baby is born and the Sandersons leave soon after. Years later, Pikelet finds out that Eva has died as a result of an autoerotic fatality. He also learns Loonie was murdered in a bar after a drug deal gone wrong.

Pikelet, now in his fifties, reflects on his experience with the Sandersons and Loonie. He notes that his bond with his mother was never recovered, his marriage had fallen apart and that he had himself committed to an asylum. The book ends with Pikelet claiming that surfing was the only activity he could do without any reason and that the sport was still dear to his heart even after all those years.

Characters
Bruce "Pikelet" Pike
Ivan "Loonie" Loon
Bill "Sando" Sanderson
Eva Sanderson

Themes
Reviewer Cathleen Schine describes Winton as "a writer who values themes, a practitioner of what might be called the school of Macho Romanticism, or perhaps better, Heroic Sensitivity". She writes that Winton's characters "tend to flirt with death, long for death, while at the same time bravely suffering physical hardship in order to escape death". In a somewhat similar vein, Aida Edemariam contrasts Winton to Hemingway, writing that in Winton "Land and sea are too implacable for such [ie Hemingway's] triumphalism, too capable of the sudden knock-out blow" and she goes on to say that "Winton's books are stalked by the possibility of the fatal undertow, on sea, on land, emotionally; by the knowledge of how fragile the strongest bodies, the bravest minds, can be".

It is a book about risk, about finding a balance between being extraordinary and ordinary. The imagery Winton uses to explore these concepts is that of "breathing and gasping for breath". The boys' friendship is established through their daring each other to hold their breath under water, but breath also appears in other forms in the novel: in Pikelet's father's snoring, in the loss of breath when being knocked over in the surf, in games that toy with asphyxiation, and in the resuscitation that is crucial to Pike's work as a paramedic. In Winton's conception, the very ordinary act of breathing can take on a grandeur when associated with "the ecstasy and brief transcendence vouchsafed to those who challenge seas".

Andrew Riemer, in his review, suggests than "Thomas Mann dealt with the same paradox, the same tragic dilemma of beauty and destruction, in Death in Venice, though from a very different perspective. Winton's book belongs, I think, to the same tradition, though in place of Mann's typically European immersion in high culture, Winton articulates his concerns in an almost unsullied Australian vernacular."

Canadian reviewer Ian McGillis, on the other hand, compares Winton with Ian McEwan, writing that "Breath shares with Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach that sense of a good if compromised life lived in the aftermath of decisions made without adequate preparation." He writes "that the choices he [Bruce Pike] made in youth will follow him, for better or worse, to the grave" and that Winton does not offer any easy solutions but rather leaves "the reader to ponder the implications".

Surfing
In an interview with Aida Edemariam, of The Guardian, Winton says about surfing:  "I can afford to blow the morning off and go for a surf. I think, 'oh god, I'm nearly 50, you know? If I can get another 10 or 15 years of surfing - that's fine. I've worked hard, I tell myself, as I'm throwing the board in the car. I owe it to myself. A bit of water over the gills. That's my reward. I'm happier. In the same way I did when I was a teenager. Going down to the sea in anguish and turmoil and bewilderment, pubescent eruption, then coming home blissed out and happy. At one with the world."

Literary significance and reception
Breath featured as the Book at Bedtime on BBC Radio 4 from 23 June to 4 July 2008.

The Publishers Weekly Signature review by David Maine praises Breath: "This slender book packs an emotional wallop."

Film adaptation

Filming of Breath began in April 2016. Australian actor and The Mentalist star Simon Baker directed the production, producer Mark Johnson having teamed to acquire feature rights to the novel.  Baker also starred in the movie, which was released in 2017.

Awards and nominations
 2008 Age Book of the Year, Fiction – winner
 2008 Indie Awards – Fiction
 2009 Miles Franklin Award
 2009 Shortlisted Commonwealth Writers' Prize, South East Asia and the South Pacific Region
 2009 Shortlisted New South Wales NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Christina Stead Prize

References

External links
Schine, Cathleen,  "Walking on Water" (Review), The New York Review of Books

2008 Australian novels
Australian bildungsromans
Australian novels adapted into films
Australian sports novels
Fiction set in the 1970s
Hamish Hamilton books
Novels about child sexual abuse
Novels about dysfunctional families
Novels about rape
Novels by Tim Winton
Novels set in Western Australia
Surf culture
Surfing mass media

Breath (novel)


František "Frank" Daniel (April 14, 1926 – February 29, 1996) was a Czech-American screenwriter, film director and teacher.  He is known for developing the sequence paradigm of screenwriting, in which a classically constructed movie can be broken down into three acts, and a total of eight specific sequences. He served as co-chair of the Columbia University film program, and as a dean of FAMU, the American Film Institute and the USC School of Cinema-Television. He was also an Artistic Director of the Sundance Institute.

Life

Czechoslovakia
František Daniel was born in Kolín, Czechoslovakia. He earned a master's degree in music before studying film at VGIK in Moscow. Daniel was a member of a production unit Feix-Daniel at state-owned Barrandov Studios. In addition to that he wrote screenplays and taught screenwriting at FAMU in Prague. Among his students were Miloš Forman, Věra Chytilová or Pavel Juráček. In 1959 he had to leave Barrandov after the movies he worked on were criticised for having "liberal tendencies" by František Kahuda.
In 1956, Daniel and Miloš Kratochvíl published the screenwriting textbook Cesta za filmovým dramatem. In 1965, he produced The Shop on Main Street, which won an Oscar for the best foreign language film. In 1968 he served as dean of the Faculty of Film and Television – FAMU, part of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.

United States

Daniel first toured the United States at the behest of W. McNeil Lowry of the Ford Foundation, who commissioned him to do a survey of film education in the United States and make recommendations for its future development. Daniel subsequently immigrated to the United States in 1969 after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1969 he became the first dean of the American Film Institute, where he taught David Lynch and Terrence Malick.

Daniel left the Institute in 1976 to become Henry Luce Professor at Carleton College in Minnesota. In 1978, he moved to Columbia University, where he was reunited with Miloš Forman, his former student, with whom he co-chaired the Columbia University School of the Arts Film program. When Robert Redford founded Sundance Institute in 1981, Daniel was recruited by Sundance Executive Director Sterling Van Wagenen to be the Institute's first Artistic Director, a guiding post he held for over a decade. He taught at Columbia University until 1986. After Columbia he became the dean of USC School of Cinema-Television, a post he stepped down from in 1990, continuing to teach screenwriting in the Graduate Screenwriting Division. He continued to develop scripts.
He was an advisor to the Rockefeller Foundation, consultant to David Rockefeller, member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. He was married twice and had two sons. Michal, a photographer, and Martin, a film professor.

Daniel lived in Palm Springs, California until his death on February 29, 1996. He was 69 when he died of a heart attack. He is buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California.

Books
 1956 Zlatá zeď (Golden Wall) – novel based on his experiences in China
 1956 Cesta za filmovým dramatem (The Path to Film Drama)
 1957 Stručný přehled vývoje evropských dramatických teorií (The Compact Overview of European Dramatic Theories)

Filmography
 Není stále zamračeno (1950), Screenwriter
 O věcech nadpřirozených (1958), Screenwriter
 Kam čert nemůže aka When the Woman Butts In (1959), Screenwriter
 Spadla z Měsíce (1961), Screenwriter
 Hledá se táta (1961), Director/Screenwriter
 Prosím, nebudit (1962), Screenwriter
 Deštivý den (1962), Screenwriter
 Letos v září (1963), Director
 Dva tygři (1966), Screenwriter
 Last Rose from Casanova (1966), Screenwriter
 Přísně tajné premiéry (1967), Screenwriter
 The Shop on Main Street (1968), Producer
 In the Wee Wee Hours... (1987), Producer

References

 1983 "The Czech Difference" in Art and Commitment in the East European Cinema, edited by David W. Paul, pp. 49–56, .

1926 births
1996 deaths
Czech film directors
Czechoslovak film directors
Czech screenwriters
Male screenwriters
Czech male writers
Czech film producers
Film producers from California
People from Palm Springs, California
USC School of Cinematic Arts faculty
Carleton College faculty
Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography alumni
20th-century American businesspeople
Czechoslovak emigrants to the United States
American people of Czech descent
Writers from Kolín
Burials at Forest Lawn Cemetery (Cathedral City)
20th-century American screenwriters
Academic staff of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague

Frank Daniel


Gobustan State Historical and Cultural Reserve () is located west of the settlement of Gobustan, about  southwest of the centre of Baku. It was established in 1966, when the area was declared a national historical landmark of Azerbaijan in an attempt to preserve the prehistoric rock carvings, mud volcanoes and musical stones in the region.

Gobustan State Reserve is very rich in archeological monuments. Gobustan Rock Art Cultural Landscape within the reserve, which covers an area of 537 ha, has more than 6,000 rock carvings, which depict people, animals, battle-pieces, ritual dances, bullfights, boats with armed oarsmen, warriors with lances in their hands, camel caravans, pictures of sun and stars, on the average dating back to 5,000-20,000 years.

Gobustan State Historical and Cultural Reserve acquired national status in 2006, and Gobustan Rock Art Cultural Landscape was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2007. As of 2011, the Petroglyph Museum functions in the reserve.

Prehistoric carvings
The rock carvings and petroglyphs, located at the part of the reserve called Gobustan Rock Art Cultural Landscape, display mesmerizing images of prehistoric life in the Caucasus. The well-preserved sketches display ancient populations travelling on reed boats; men hunting antelope and wild bulls, and women dancing.  The controversial Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl returned many times to Azerbaijan between 1961 and his death in 2002 to study the site in his "Search for Odin".

The language of the ancient population of Gobustan is disputed, but the petroglyphs still give information about the lives of prehistoric people who lived there. More than 4,000 pictures of animals, humans, natural life experiences, hunting, and dancing were carved over a span of thousands of years. Most of the petroglyphs are on large cliffs, divided among multiple ancient residences, and in some cases they have been carved over older images. The first carvings depicted natural human and animal figures, often irregularly, but over time they began to more closely resemble the measurements and proportions of their subjects, including such details as the foot muscles of people in hunting scenes. The heads of the human figures tend to be small and carved without noses, mouths, eyes, or ears. However, experts do not interpret this lack of facial features as an indication that the Gobustan artists lacked technical skill, since some of the carvings demonstrate a higher degree of complexity and detail. Many scenes from tribal life are depicted among the petroglyphs, and images from the Seven Beauties cave suggest that women may have participated in hunting.

Roman inscription

In June 1948, the chief of the archaeological expedition of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR Ishag Jafarzadeh discovered a Latin inscription on a large rock near the southeastern slope of the Boyuk-Dash mountain, which reads:

Because of its uniqueness and mysteriousness, the inscription attracted attention of specialists in Latin epigraphy and history of ancient Rome and Transcaucasia. It is the easternmost of all known Latin inscriptions, and is the only Latin inscription found on the territory of ancient Caucasian Albania. Most experts consider this inscription to be an indisputable proof of the presence of Roman troops in the eastern part of Transcaucasia in late 1st century BC. An alternative theory suggests that the inscription might have been left by a Roman centurion who carried out a secret intelligence or diplomatic mission.

Gaval Dash
The Gaval Dash is a natural musical stone which can only be found in Gobustan, Azerbaijan. It stands at the entrance to the reserve, and is one of four "singing stones" found there. When this big, two-meter-long stone is struck with smaller rocks, it makes a hollow, ringing sound, resembling the sound of a tambourine, or "gaval" in Azerbaijani language. This unique resonance is created by microscopic holes inside the rock, which are believed to result from the dry climate and the effect of natural gas in the region.

Mud volcanoes
It's estimated that 300 of the planet's estimated 700 mud volcanoes are located in Gobustan, Azerbaijan, and the Caspian Sea. Mud volcanoes of Gobustan are a popular attraction for both scientists and tourists, the latter often bathing in mud, which is thought to have medicinal qualities.

In April 2021, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for the new Mud Volcanoes Tourism Complex, which will cover the area of 12-hectares, and include a quad bike path, footpaths, a zip line and an observation tower, a parking lot, a souvenir shop, as well as therapeutic baths. There are also plans to improve road infrastructure by extending a 20-kilometer road from the Gobustan Reserve to "Gilinj" mud volcano site and nearby volcanoes and create the Baku-Gobustan-Mud volcanoes tourism cluster.

Flora and fauna
The natural conditions were completely different 20-25 thousand years ago. Judging by the depictions of animals and human figures in Gobustan, the region had a warm climate 10 to 12 thousand years ago. People were wearing light clothes, and women were wearing short leather dresses. Because of the permanent hot weather, greenery and abundant water, Gobustan was the habitat of wild animals such as bulls, horses, deer, goats, and others. According to the rock carvings and the archeological evidence, wolves, tigers, foxes, jackals and other wild animals also inhabited this area.

In 1968, bones of an unknown large animal were discovered  under the ground during the excavation works near Atbulakh. The workers informed the Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan SSR. After the examination of the discovered bones, it was determined that these bones were the cervical vertebrae of the southern mammoth that lived in Gobustan.

External links
Official website
Gobustan from "Window to Baku"
The Rock Engravings of Gobustan from a site devoted to Jean Auel's books.

See also
 Nature of Azerbaijan
 National Parks of Azerbaijan
 State Reserves of Azerbaijan
 State Game Reserves of Azerbaijan
 Zoroastrianism in Azerbaijan
 Gobustan District
 Ramana, Azerbaijan
 Khinalyg
 Yanar Dag
 Fire Temple of Baku

References

State reserves of Azerbaijan
Environment of Azerbaijan
World Heritage Sites in Azerbaijan
Mud volcanoes
1966 establishments in Azerbaijan


Baron Segrave (Seagrave) is a title in the Peerage of England. It was created by writ in 1283 for Nicholas de Segrave, and the title is drawn from a village in Leicestershire now spelled Seagrave.

The 6th Baron Segrave had previously succeeded to the title of Baron Mowbray, and thereafter, the two baronies have remained united, apart from a period of about a hundred years. For several generations they were subsidiary titles of the Dukes of Norfolk, and in 1777, they both went into abeyance with the death of the 9th Duke of Norfolk.

The second creation, by writ was for Nicholas de Segrave of Barton Segrave in the County of Northampton in 1295, becoming extinct on the death of his daughter Maud in 1335.

In 1831, a new Barony of Segrave was granted to Colonel William Berkeley, later created first Earl FitzHardinge, but this creation became extinct when he died without an heir in 1857.

Despite this interlude, the original barony of Segrave was still in existence, and in 1878, it was called out of abeyance for Alfred Stourton, 23rd Baron Mowbray, some two weeks after he had similarly recovered the barony of Mowbray. The titles have remained united since.

Barons Segrave, of Segrave (1283)
Nicholas Segrave, 1st Baron Segrave (d. 1295)
John Segrave, 2nd Baron Segrave (1256–1325)
Stephen Segrave, 3rd Baron Segrave (d. 1326)
John Segrave, 4th Baron Segrave (1315–1353)
Elizabeth Segrave, 5th Baroness Segrave (d. 1375, or bef. 1368, or c. 1399)
John de Mowbray, 1st Earl of Nottingham, 6th Baron Segrave (1365–1379)
Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk, 7th Baron Segrave (1366-1399)
Thomas de Mowbray, 4th Earl of Norfolk, 8th Baron Segrave (1385-1405)
John Mowbray, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, 9th Baron Segrave (1392-1432)
John Mowbray, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, 10th Baron Segrave (1415–1461)
John Mowbray, 4th Duke of Norfolk, 11th Baron Segrave (1444–1476)
Anne Mowbray, 8th Countess of Norfolk, 12th Baroness Segrave (1472–1481)
In abeyance
John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk, 13th Baron Segrave, c. 1425–1485
Forfeit
For further Barons Segrave, see Baron Mowbray.

Barons Segrave, of Barton Segrave  (1295)
Nicholas de Segrave, 1st Baron (d. 1321)
Maude de Bohun, 2nd Baroness (d, 1335)

Barons Segrave, of Berkley Castle (1831)
William Berkeley, 1st Earl FitzHardinge (1786-1857), created Baron Segrave of Berkeley Castle in the County of Gloucester in 1831

Family tree

References

Burkes Peerage

1295 establishments in England
Baronies in the Peerage of England
Baronies by writ
Extinct baronies in the Peerage of the United Kingdom
Noble titles created in 1295
Noble titles created in 1831
Noble titles created for UK MPs

Baron Segrave