Slovakia

Slovakia is a country in the middle of Europe.

It has no coast on the sea. Big mountains cover much of the land. A long river called the Danube flows past the capital city. The capital is called Bratislava.

Slovakia is a landlocked country in central Europe, which means it has no coast on the sea. Poland lies to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the southwest and Czechia to the west.

The Western Carpathian Mountains cover much of the country, and its highest peak, in the High Tatras, is 2,655 meters tall. Most of Slovakia's rivers flow south into the Danube. At the end of 2025, about 5.4 million people lived in Slovakia, and the official language is Slovak.

Slovakia is a landlocked state of about 49,000 square kilometers in central Europe, bordered by Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Austria and Czechia, its former federal partner. Britannica describes the Western Carpathians as dominating its topography: three belts of east-west ranges (Outer, Central and Inner) separated by valleys and basins, with two lowlands along the Hungarian border, the Little Alföld (Danubian Lowland) in the southwest and the Eastern Slovakian Lowland in the east.

Slovakia's Statistics Office counted 5,409,407 inhabitants at the end of 2025, the fifth year of decline in a row; in 2025 about 42,000 babies were born and more than 53,500 people died. Slovakia became an independent country on January 1, 1993.

Bratislava is the capital city.

A big castle stands on a hill above the river. Košice is a city in the east. It has a long old street in the middle. Some villages have old wooden houses.

Bratislava lies in the far southwest, on the Danube, close to the borders with Austria and Hungary; Vienna is only 56 kilometers away. Its huge castle stands on a plateau 100 meters above the river. For more than 200 years, from 1536 to 1783, Bratislava was the capital of Hungary.

Košice is the second-largest city and the center of southeastern Slovakia. Its long medieval main street, Hlavná Ulica, is still the heart of the city. In the mountains, the village of Vlkolínec keeps 43 old log-built homesteads, and Banská Štiavnica was a center of silver and gold mining.

Bratislava, known as Pozsony in Hungarian and Pressburg in German, stands where the Danube cuts a gorge through the Little Carpathians near the meeting point of the Slovak, Austrian and Hungarian borders. After the Ottoman victory at Mohács in 1526, the Hungarian Diet moved the capital from Buda, and the city served as Hungary's capital from 1536 until 1783; Habsburg rulers were crowned kings of Hungary in its Gothic Cathedral of St. Martin. Britannica gives 475,503 people in 2021.

Košice, chartered in 1241, keeps its medieval Hlavná Ulica with the Gothic Cathedral of St. Elizabeth. UNESCO lists Banská Štiavnica (1993), the oldest mining town in Slovakia, where Europe's first Mining and Forestry Academy opened in 1762; Vlkolínec (1993), a well-preserved medieval rural settlement in the mountains with 43 nearly intact homesteads; Spišský Hrad, with one of the largest ensembles of 13th- and 14th-century military, political and religious buildings in eastern Europe, together with the walled town of Levoča; and eight wooden churches of the Carpathians built between the 16th and 18th centuries (2008).

More than five million people live in Slovakia.

Most people speak Slovak. Some people speak Hungarian or other languages. A special Slovak dish is little potato dumplings with sheep's cheese.

More than four out of five people in Slovakia are Slovaks. Hungarians, who live mostly near the southern border, are the largest minority, and there are smaller groups of Roma, Rusyns, Czechs, Germans and Poles. Slovak is the official language. It is a West Slavic language, close enough to Czech that speakers of the two can understand each other.

More than half of the people live in towns and cities. A Slovak specialty is bryndzové halušky: small potato dumplings mixed with bryndza, a cheese made from sheep's milk. Many folk music festivals take place, with Slovak and Roma performers.

Ethnic Slovaks make up more than four-fifths of the population; Hungarians, concentrated in the southern border districts, are the largest minority at less than one-tenth, with Ruthenians (Rusyns) in the east and northeast, a sizable Roma population mainly in the east, and small numbers of Czechs, Germans and Poles. Slovak, a West Slavic language written in the Roman alphabet, is mutually intelligible with Czech; Hungarian, Polish, German, Ukrainian, Rusyn and Romany are also spoken, and a few western villages speak Croatian. Most people are Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed churches have significant minorities, Greek Catholic and Orthodox Christians live in Rusyn districts, and more than one-tenth of people follow no religion.

School is compulsory from 6 to 15. Slovak cooking shares much with Hungarian and German food: soups, stewed vegetables, roasted and smoked meats and dairy, especially bryndza, a sheep's-milk cheese served with small potato dumplings as bryndzové halušky. Vineyards along the Danube and Váh go back to the Romans about 2,000 years ago.