Discover Preschau: Solivar, Collections and City Panorama

Preschau combines an impressive urban history with unusual collections and a technical cultural monument. If you are planning a trip with specific historical experiences, you will find different ways to explore the city here: a guided tour of the Solivar complex, collections in the Rákociho Palace, sacred architecture and a 360-degree panorama of Prešov.

Solivar: the history of salt on a guided tour

The Múzeum Solivar offers visitors a guided tour of the entire Solivar complex. Solivar in Prešov is a national cultural monument. The complex dates from the 17th century and includes technical facilities for extracting and boiling salt from brine. This means that the focus is not just on a single building, but on an integrated historical salt-production process.

The surviving structures include a horse-powered winding mechanism above the Leopold shaft. One of these winding mechanisms dates from the 19th century and is open to the public. The guided tour and this preserved technical object focus on different aspects: you can get to know the complex as a whole while also viewing a specific element of its historic equipment.

Historic centre, sacred architecture and city views

For orientation in the historic centre, Prešov’s mobile audio-guide app contains nearly 30 recorded commentaries on sights. The individual recordings lead to various historical points of interest, so you do not have to limit your city tour to a single collection or one building.

The Co-Cathedral of Saint Nicholas is the oldest building in Prešov and the city’s only surviving Gothic sacred building. Among its preserved objects is a particularly valuable Gothic sculpture of the Crucified Christ dating from the first half of the 14th century. Another special view of the city can be enjoyed from the tower, where a 360-degree panorama of Prešov is on display. To reach it, you must climb 220 steps to a height of 70 metres.

The Orthodox Synagogue on Okružná Street is also part of the historic cityscape. It was built at the end of the 19th century in the Neo-Romanesque-Moorish style. Its architectural form creates a distinctive accent alongside the Gothic Co-Cathedral.

Collections in the Rákociho Palace

The Rákociho Palace presents Renaissance art, valuable clocks, weapons and means of payment, as well as the thousand-year history of the city of Prešov. The palace also houses a collection of historic and newer firefighting technology that is unique in Slovakia in this comprehensive form, complemented by the history of firefighting.

Another exhibition presents the everyday and festive life of a Šariš village. Textiles, agriculture, crafts, housing, work and leisure reveal various aspects of village life. If you enjoy exploring cultural and historical topics through specific objects and areas of life, the same palace offers several clearly distinct areas of focus.

Evangelical College and the surrounding area

The Evangelical College in Prešov is an important monument to the history of Protestant education. Its assembly hall, known as Dvorana, houses the historic holdings of the college library, with more than 40,000 volumes. A monument erected at the Evangelical College in 1908 commemorates the victims of the Caraffa blood tribunal of 1687. This site therefore brings together the history of education, historic book collections and a culture of remembrance.

In the wider area around Prešov, Zbojnícky hrad Castle can be reached from the municipality of Ruská Nová Ves via a marked hiking trail. This allows you to complement your stay in Preschau with a destination outside the immediate urban area.

Further destinations: Kapušany, Veľký Šariš, Trnkov, Ľubotice, Hermanovce and Fričovce.

For the overview of the wider area: Prešov.