City of Stupava

The history of Stupava is inextricably linked with the leading aristocratic Pálffy family, its members have determined its development for almost three centuries. The Károlyi family continued to enlarge the town, the Stupava manor house and the park.

According to written sources, in the 16th century, a smaller manor house stood on the site of today's manor house. At that time, it also included fruit gardens, one was located at the manorial mill (now a non-functional artificial waterfall), the other at the now defunct brewery. During the reconstruction of the manor house into a Renaissance manor house in the middle of the 17th century, the garden certainly underwent a representative modification, but we do not know its appearance. However, the name of the oldest known manorial gardener has been preserved, in 1670 he was Filip Kaser.

The following Baroque adaptation of the manor garden from the middle of the 18th century was captured in a situation plan stored in the Pálffy archives. Renaissance defensive moats around the manor house were rebuilt into ornamental gardens with two water jets. The area east of the manor, in the place of today's lake, has been transformed into regularly bordered ornamental flower beds in the French style. The baroque garden of the manor house also included a riding hall, two smaller greenhouses, a mill and apartments for a manor gardener, forester and carpenter. After the ownership change of the Stupava estate in 1867, the new owner, Count Alojz Károlyi, had not only the manor house renovated, but also the manor garden in its vicinity. In the second half of the 19th century, the garden was transformed into a landscape park in the English style. The swampy water area east of the manor house was converted into a pond with a stone border of the banks and an artificial islet.

The total park area was significantly expanded and supplemented with new non-native trees. Sensitively composed picturesque vistas were created in the park, providing harmonious groupings and solitaires of various woody plants, combined with grassy areas. The maintained park environment passed freely to the forest stands in the vicinity of Pajštún Castle, where a zoo was set up and maintained at great financial expense. In the first half of the 20th century, there were several farm buildings in the park area - a brewery, a crate, a laundry room and a mill, which is the only one that has survived to this day. Two streams flowed through the park, feeding artificial lakes. At the football stadium, a torso of a gazebo with an access road originally lined with an alley of a horse chestnut tree has been preserved on an elevated spot.

Old baroque greenhouses probably no longer existed at this time. At the end of the 19th century, Count Károlyi had a new three-part heated greenhouse with a boiler room built. It was used for growing flowers, seedlings and for wintering tropical flowers. At present, the greenhouse is in a state of disrepair, but it is one of the unique preserved monuments of its kind in Slovakia and is waiting for a well-deserved monumental restoration. It consists of a cast iron structure placed on a retaining wall and a masonry platform, the glazed angled surface is oriented to the south. The construction was filled with rectangular glass plates, the cast iron construction included an entrance door and ventilating folding windows. According to the testimony of historical photographs and postcards, they spent the winter in palm trees in large wooden flowerpots. The temperature in the greenhouse was regulated by the manorial gardeners with roll-up shading mats and wooden boards placed on the outside in a glass area. In the summer, they adorned the edges of the sidewalks between the eastern wing of the manor house and the lake with exotic palm trees.

The last manor gardener in the service of Count Ľudovít Károlyi was Jozef Krupička (1874 - 1948), the son of the chief gardener, Prince Pálffy, in Malacky. In the autumn of 1927, he organized a three-day exhibition of fruits and vegetables in greenhouses. According to a newspaper report, vegetables of all kinds were exhibited in surprising quality and flowers, including beautiful massive palm trees, begonias and orchids, which formed the framework of the entire exhibition. The most beautiful was said to be the fruit exposition, which was complemented by a demonstration of processed and canned fruit and vegetables. At that time, about 2,000 visitors saw the exhibition with great interest.

Stupava park with rare trees is one of the most beautiful in the Bratislava region, one of the most admired trees are the massive western plane trees. Despite insensitive construction interventions in the past half century and insufficient maintenance, the park is a bearer of rare cultural and historical values. It was entered in the list of cultural monuments together with the manor house in 1963, at present it is a national cultural monument, registered in the Central List of Monuments.