IN 1526 THE Ottoman army crushed the military forces of the Kingdom of Hungary at the Battle of Mohács and soon afterwards Buda, then the kingdom’s capital, fell. This is how the Bratislava secondary grammar school currently known as Gymnázium Grösslingova began.
When Buda was captured by the Ottomans, many Hungarian institutions were moved to Bratislava because it was free of Ottoman rule and the city became the de facto capital of the Kingdom of Hungary.
Perhaps this is why Cardinal Peter Pázmány, the Archbishop of Esztergom, issued a foundation charter for a Bratislava Jesuit secondary school called Collegium Posoniense in 1626. Lessons at the secondary school began on November 5 of that year and until 1714 the school resided in rented space on Kapitulská Street. Later it moved into the building of a Jesuit monastery.
That this secondary school changed its name 18 times and its language of instruction several times over its history was a rather typical phenomenon for this part of Europe. It is also interesting to note that the first young woman to pass exams here did so in 1874.
In 1898 the school moved into its current building, seen in this postcard from the 1920s. The school is among the oldest in all of Slovakia.
