Bratislava has been seen as an outpost of the long-dissolved communist empire for years but is now growing into “the region’s capital of cool”, the New York Times (NYT) writes.
A travel piece, written by Mark Ellwood, looks into how young locals, some of whom came back from abroad, are transforming Slovakia’s capital with their businesses, including cafés and clothes shops.

“Bratislava is unique, in that it has been starved of attention and was maybe waiting for its opportunity to come to the surface, to bloom into something,” Mandla café owner Jakub Dianiška told the NYT. “That’s what’s happening now.”