Water barracks

Bratislava, rising at a strategic point in the Kingdom of Hungary and the Carpathian Basin, has had important military significance in all ages. Our Habsburg kings accordingly tried to constantly maintain a serious garrison in the city. The soldiers - according to modern custom - were forced to be "guests" in their houses by the civilian population, providing food and accommodation for their officers and soldiers. The population of Bratislava was freed from this serious burden when the new barracks were built in 1763, probably according to the plans of Franz Anton Hillebrandt. ; The rectangular, two-story, gable-roofed, tiled barracks, which was the largest building of its time for this purpose in the empire and was suitable for accommodating two entire infantry regiments, enclosed a huge courtyard in the middle, which was the location for the training of the units. The circular corridors, which match the internal facades of the Baroque barracks, with a simple, practical design, and symmetrical design, look out onto the courtyard with an arched arcade. ; The huge building - which was named "Vizi" because of its proximity to the Danube - operated not only as a barracks, but also as a prison. Between 1805 and 1899, prisoners of the Napoleonic Wars languished here, in 1848 the Hungarians, and in 1849, after the city fell into Habsburg hands, political prisoners of the imperialists were imprisoned within its walls. Baron László Mednyánszky, the military colonel and heroic commander of Lipótvár, spent his last evening here. He was sentenced to death by court-martial after the surrender of the castle and was eventually hanged by Haynau - together with artillery lieutenant Fülöp Gruber - on Szamárhegy in Bratislava on June 5, 1849. Imre Madách was also imprisoned within the walls of the Vizi barracks. ; From 1871, the 72nd Infantry Regiment, transferred here from Vienna, inhabited the barracks, and Ernő Dohnányi also played in the orchestra as a conductor. In the summer of 1918, during the finale of World War I, a military mutiny broke out within the walls of the barracks. After the city was given to the newly created Czechoslovak state in Trianon, the new government named the building after General M. R. Štefánik and housed various technical units in it. After the location lost its military significance, in 1940 the city demolished the southern wing of the barracks facing the Danube, citing the widening of the embankment road. After World War II, the state-owned building was given to the Slovak National Gallery, which is still used by this institution today. Its Danube facade was "supplemented" with a new wing, which was out of proportion, "modern", and in fact rather clumsy and out of place, and which was built according to the plans of Vladimír Dedeček in 1969–1977. The ground floor of this wing is "missing", so today we can walk through it into the gallery's courtyard.