« Restoration of Bratislava Castle »

Bratislava Castle, which for centuries has been a prominent and outstanding feature of the city, towers eighty-five metres above the Danube. But once again the ravages of time had not spared this impressive historic structure. Sections of the Castle had fallen into ruin, and in the course of its history it had been damaged by fire and undergone several phases of reconstruction. Now a listed building, it is currently undergoing restoration on a large scale. As the landmark of the city of Bratislava the Castle is a recurring motif; indeed it also features on the Slovak Republic’s euro coins.

The Castle is to be restored to the way it looked following its conversion to a royal residence under Maria Theresa, who has also queen of the Kingdom of Hungary. The reasons were clear: the remodelling signalled the completion of Bratislava Castle’s historical development - before it was destroyed by flames in 1811. Until the middle of last century the Castle had continued to deteriorate, and the demolition of the ruins was considered on many an occasion. The most recent restoration of the castle was carried out between 1953 and 1968. With the formation of the Czech and Slovak federal system, the requirements for the Bratislava Castle changed after 1968. The castle has become a place of national representation and the Slovak National Museum has also placed its exhibits there.

After eight years of planning work the first stage of the extensive renovations began in April 2008, with the Castle palace. Besides the restoration work to the extremely poor structural condition of the building itself the emphasis is on achieving a better future use for the Castle and recapturing the historical essence of some of its elements. The reconstruction work is now well under way. The outer shell, the Castle courtyard and all the interiors are all to be renovated. The entire project is to be officially completed by 2012.

As a professional system integrator well-known nationwide our local partner SecuriLas s.r.o. was awarded the contract to equip the Castle and its ancillary buildings with state-of-the-art security products and technologies to protect it against fire, unauthorised access and burglary. The Castle and its annex are therefore to be protected against fire using a large-scale SecuriPro fire alarm system and numerous SecuriRas ASD 535 aspirating smoke detection systems; the underground car park is to be equipped with our SecuriSens ADW 511 line type heat detectors. The individual control panels in the various buildings, some of which are sizeable distances apart, are to be networked using fibre optic cables. Our partner SecuriLas had already installed Securiton security systems in Bratislava Castle some years ago. All the systems and technologies converge in the security and alarm control centre, which is manned 24-hours a day and continually monitored.