Saturday, August 1, 2009

Banská Štiavnica (Selmecbánya) - Botanical garden

The Slovakian border is only forty minutes by car from us. Slovakia is full of beautiful landscapes and monuments. Very civilized and prices are rather low. Whenever we can, we go over to sip a little bit of Europe there.

One of our favorites is Banská Štiavnica / Selmecbánya (the first is its Slovakian name, the second the Hungarian name, as Slovakia was part of the Hungarian kingdom until 1918, and the majority of the town’s inhabitants was Hungarian). It’s a wonderful little medieval town. Fabulous places, fantastic cafés and “brave old world” small restaurants.

You should by any means check on it the post of Tamás in Poemas del Río Wang.

In this week we finally managed to get there again.

This time we also went to visit the local botanical garden.

This was the garden of the Academy of Banská Štiavnica. The first academy of mining and metallurgy in Europe was established in this town in 1737, and it was further enlarged with a department of forestry in 1807.

This botanical garden is especially famous of its exotic trees, pines, cedars and Sequoias. The above two images show a Sequiodendrum giganteum which had come from America many, many, many years ago.

By walking among the gigantic old trees one understands what makes an aristocratic castle.

Time somehow becomes touchable.

1 comment:

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