Place:Piešťany, Trnava, Slovakia

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Piešťany is a town in Slovakia. It is located in the western part of the country within the Trnava Region and is the seat of its own district. It is the biggest and best known spa town in Slovakia and has around 28,000 inhabitants.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The first human settlement in the area is dated to the prehistoric times, about 80,000 years ago. People were attracted to the site by abundance of game in the vicinity of the thermal springs that did not freeze in winter.

A small female statue called Venus of Moravany was found in the nearby village Moravany nad Váhom. It is made of mammoth ivory and is dated to 22,800 BC. It currently resides in the Bratislava Castle museum. In another nearby village, Krakovany-Stráže, a treasure consisting of luxury items made of glass, bronze, silver, and gold was discovered in three graves from 200–300 AD. The surroundings of Piešťany also include the Great Moravian castle of Ducové.

Piešťany was first mentioned in written records in 1113 (under the name Pescan). At that time it consisted of several smaller settlements. The medicinal springs were already popular in the Middle Ages. They were visited by the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus. The first book mentioning the Piešťany springs was De admirandis Hungariae aquis hypomnemation (About the Miraculous Waters of the Hungarian Monarchy) by Georgius Wernher, published in 1549 in Basel. In the 16th century, the Piešťany spa was also mentioned by two prominent physicians, Johann Crato de Crafheim (who served to several Holy Roman Emperors) and (a personal surgeon of the Pope). The first monography (Schediasma de Thermis Postheinsibus by was published in 1745. But in the 16th and 17th centuries, Piešťany also suffered from Turkish raids and anti-Habsburg uprisings.

Throughout the centuries Piešťany was owned by several noble families; the last of them, the Erdődys, owned the area from 1720 to 1848, and the spa until 1940. The Erdődy family built the first spa buildings in 1778. They were damaged by a destructive flood in 1813. In 1820 the spa buildings were expanded and remodeled in neo-classical style and named Napoleon spa. The Erdődy family also established the Spa park in this period. In the years 1889 to 1940 the Winter family rented the spa from the Erdődys and brought it to international fame. improved spa treatment as well as accommodation and entertainment for visitors. They built several spa buildings and hotels.

The spa attracted many aristocratic visitors, including Ludwig van Beethoven.^[1] In 1917, three monarchs (Wilhelm II of Germany, Karl I of Austria-Hungary, and Ferdinand I of Bulgaria) orchestrated their war strategy during the negotiations in the Thermia Palace hotel.

In 1945 Piešťany received the official status of a town. In 1959, Sĺňava water reservoir was built south of the town. In the late 1960s and 1970s more spa buildings were built. In 1973 the village of Banka, located on the left bank of the Váh river, was amalgamated with Piešťany, but it regained independence after a referendum in 1995. In 1996 the town became the seat of a district.

The 1938 World Fencing Championships were held in Piešťany.

On January 4, 1987, at the final match in the World Junior Championships of ice hockey between Canada and the Soviet Union there was a bench-clearing brawl, now famously known as the Punch-up in Piešťany. Both teams were disqualified from competition as a result.

On July 5, 2001 three members of the Real Irish Republican Army were arrested in Piešťany. They were lured into a trap by agents of the British Security Service MI5 who were posing as arms dealers from Iraq.

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