Нитра

Nitra is where Slovak history begins. Beneath Zobor hill, the town was the seat of Prince Pribina, in whose realm the first Christian church among the western Slavs was consecrated around 828 — the founding date every Slovak schoolchild learns — and a generation later Great Moravia's rulers received Cyril and Methodius, whose Slavonic mission passes through Nitra's story as it does through Bulgaria's. The castle hill still carries the cathedral and bishop's palace above the old town, the diocese claiming descent from that ninth-century dawn; the statue of Pribina holds the square, and Corgoň, the stone strongman under his corner balcony, gets his toe rubbed for luck.

Modern Nitra is western Slovakia's market and university city — the agricultural university's flying-saucer aula is a modernist landmark, and the Agrokomplex fairgrounds host the national exhibitions — with a theatrical flagship in the Andrej Bagar Theatre's postmodern palace on the square and an international theatre festival of standing each autumn. The concert record describes the musical register accurately: choirs, church music, chamber and festival programmes under the cathedral's patronage — a city whose deepest music has always been liturgical. Eleven centuries of bells over the Nitra river: the country's story starts here, and the town has never needed to raise its voice about it.