Tips for trip

The majestic ruin of Devín Castle towers over the confluence of Morava and Danube rivers. The castle compound houses an exhibition featuring archaeological finds. Every year, the Tribute to Freedom event is organised at the castle to commemorate the fall of the Iron Curtain. At the foot of the castle, you will find the Freedom Gate memorial that was built in remembrance of the four hundred men and women who were murdered on the border of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic when trying to escape. The memorial is shaped as a gate battered by gunshots with its grate lifted to symbolise that the gate to the free world is now open. Next to the Freedom Gate there is aMemorial to Anton Srholec, a Catholic priest who was captured with 23 other theology students when trying to swim across Morava River. He was convicted and sentenced to12 years in prison and had to toil away in uranium mines in Jáchymov for almost a decade. After his release, he was ordained by pope Paul VI in Rome. Close to the memorials, by the Danube bank, you will find a big heart made from barbed wire.