What to see in Bardejov: Milan Bez Mapy’s picks

For me, Bardejov is more than a pretty square. I gave the town one day and, with a local guide, discovered the stories behind its houses, the executioner’s pew in the basilica, the School Bastion (Školská bašta) and the Jewish suburbium. If you have more time, combine it with Bardejov Spa (Bardejovské Kúpele), where I spent two days.

Quick factsby Milan Bez Mapy

How much time

One day is enough for the town. I gave two days to Bardejov Spa, 6 km away, and one to the town

How I got there

I flew from Bratislava to Košice, hired a car at the airport, and the drive to Bardejov took an hour and twenty minutes

Worth it

A guide. Without one I’d have walked past all the town’s stories without noticing them

Trick in the square

Count the windows on the house fronts. A burgher had three, a nobleman four, the parish house five

Stone boy

He’s on the entrance to the town hall. I only found him on my third try: you need to step back a few paces

My favourite place

John Lennon Lane with its rock house. When the owner is home, he lets people in

What to see in Bardejov? I’ll start with a tune you know, even if you don’t know that you know it: Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No. 5, that fast violin piece from adverts and films. Brahms thought he was borrowing a folk tune. In fact it was by a living composer born in this very town, and it’s called A Memory of Bardejov. I’ll come back to that, because the story has a juicy ending.

I spent a day here expecting a pretty square. What I got was a town full of stories that nobody would have told me if I hadn’t had someone to ask. These are the ones that stuck.

Practical information: how to get to Bardejov

I came to Bardejov from Bardejov Spa, where I was staying; it’s only 6 km away. But I’d originally flown from Bratislava to Košice and hired a car right at the airport. The drive north-east took me an hour and twenty minutes.

I set aside a whole day for the town and hired a guide. It’s the one thing from the whole trip I’d recommend even if nobody paid me to. You can walk round the square in twenty minutes. But without a guide I’d have walked past everything in this article and noticed none of it.

Things to do in Bardejov: Milan Bez Mapy’s picks

You can read the houses in Bardejov’s square by their windows

The square is lined with 46 burghers’ houses, and not one has been added or lost since. I learned a trick here that I now use in other towns too.

Count the windows on the front. A burgher had three, a nobleman four, the parish house five. You walk along the row counting windows, and what you’re really reading is who was richer here five centuries ago.

One more thing I couldn’t get out of my head. The paving you walk on isn’t the original. That lies about 70 cm beneath your feet. The town burned down several times, and the rubble was never carted away: people just levelled it and kept building on top. That’s how some houses gradually lost their little cellar windows.

The stone boy of Bardejov that almost nobody finds

On the Renaissance entrance to the town hall there’s a small stone figure of a boy with his head between his legs, sticking his bottom out at the burghers’ houses. The story goes that he appeared overnight. He was put there by a stonemason who wasn’t paid as much as he’d been promised. Over the centuries all sorts of things have disappeared from the town, but nobody has ever taken the boy down.

• Tip from Milan It took me three tries to find him, and I had to step back a few paces. You won’t spot him from close up.

What’s more, the restoration of the town hall revealed that someone here had once been thoroughly bored. Drawings turned up on the wall that are now described as erotic: a naked woman and parrots in a fairly unambiguous position. Seggs.

Today the town hall houses the Šariš Museum’s exhibition on the history of Bardejov. It’s open from Tuesday to Sunday: from October to April from 8.30am to noon and from 12.30pm to 4pm, and from May to September from 9am to noon and from 12.30pm to 5pm. Adults pay €6, students and pensioners €3, and children aged 6 to 15 €2.50 (2026 prices).

In the basilica, the executioner has his own pew and his own door

The Basilica of St Giles (Bazilika svätého Egídia) is packed with altars, but what got me most was one plain wooden pew. It’s the executioner’s pew. When he sat in it, people in the nave couldn’t see him. Right behind it is a door made just for him, so he didn’t have to come in through the main entrance like everyone else.

And yet he was the best-paid man in town. The town needed him: he carried out executions, took away infected animals and cleaned the streets during epidemics. At the same time he had his own table in the pub, wasn’t allowed down certain streets, had to wear a hood in public and could basically only marry into other executioners’ families. The job was hereditary.

To me, that pew is the most honest object in town. The town paid a man to do its dirty work and then built him a separate entrance so it wouldn’t have to look at him while it prayed. Two more things to look out for there. During Covid, they restored the old entrance door. When they measured the wood, something didn’t add up, and under the door they found another door that nobody knew was there.

And in the 19th century, an old painting was handed to a poor craftsman for repair. The figure at the edge has stumps instead of hands, the legs are crooked and Jesus is unusually chubby. The painting lost its historical value, but they left it hanging, and I found that more likeable than if they’d hidden it away.

From the basilica tower you can see the hill where the gallows stood

I climbed the tower up a narrow one-way staircase with a simple rule: whoever is going up has right of way. From the top you can see the whole layout of the town and, on the hill opposite, a double cross. The hill is called Šibeňa hora, Gallows Hill, and that’s where the gallows stood. So the executioner had his pew down in the church and his workplace up there, each within sight of the other.

The School Bastion and a classroom from 1962

Bardejov’s fortifications are among the best preserved in Slovakia, and each bastion was once looked after by one of the guilds. I got into one of them thanks to a man who took it over during Covid and cleaned it out. The exhibition inside isn’t about the Middle Ages, though. It’s about 1962, when the bastion was last renovated. There’s a fully furnished 1960s school classroom, with desks, maps and textbooks. Much of it was donated by locals or rescued from beside rubbish bins.

I enjoyed it more than I expected. I can picture a medieval town from films. What a classroom looked like under socialism is something fewer and fewer people remember.

John Lennon Lane in Bardejov

I didn’t expect this, and it’s my favourite place in town. One man has devoted a large part of his life to the memory of John Lennon. His house carries the notes of Give Peace a Chance, the fence has boards with band names, and by the road there are stones with the names of band members and the years the bands formed and split. These days people mostly call it the rock house, and the lane beside it John Lennon Lane (Ulička Johna Lennona). It may well be the shortest street in Slovakia: it’s basically two houses.

It isn’t an official museum. When the owner is at home, he lets people in, so check before you go whether you’ll be able to get inside. A UNESCO town with a medieval square, and what made me happiest was one man’s lifelong obsession.

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Suburbium synagogue, Holocaust memorial and the Jews of Bardejov

There are plenty of historic squares in the world. When Bardejov was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2000, something else carried a lot of weight: a preserved group of Jewish buildings on the edge of the historic centre, with everything the community needed in one place.

That community made up more than a third of the town’s population. More than 3,700 people were deported, and today not a single Jew lives in Bardejov. And yet in the centre stands a prayer house preserved in a way most similar buildings in Central Europe were not. Not because anyone protected it. After the deportations, one woman took charge of the key and blacked out the windows so that the building wouldn’t attract attention.

Next to the suburbium stands a Holocaust memorial. It was pushed through by a man who was born in Bardejov, survived deportation, is now over 90 and still comes here. The marble plaques carry the names of the deported. They’re not simply in alphabetical order. Families are kept together: father, mother and then the children by age. As you walk along the plaques reading the years of birth, you find three-year-olds among the names. None of these people were leaving to work, and the town knew it. The last plaque is blank on purpose. Names are still being added.

Next to it is a plaque honouring the Righteous: the names of people who hid their neighbours, knowing it could cost them their lives. My guide said something that sums up this whole article: you can google the official figures, but Bardejov is about the stories of families that older people here still remember. One of them has stayed with me:

‘As the column was being marched away, a little boy from one of those families was pushing a scooter. A boy standing on the pavement asked if he could borrow it. He didn’t want to give it to him. His father told him to let him have it: they wouldn’t be needing it any more.’

The tune you know is called A Memory of Bardejov

And now the promised ending to the story from the start. Béla Kéler was born in Bardejov in 1820 and wrote dances that were played all over Europe. He called one of his pieces Bártfai emlék, A Memory of Bardejov.

Brahms used the melody as the basis for his Hungarian Dance No. 5 because he was convinced it was a folk tune. When Kéler objected, Brahms wrote back, more or less, that a composer can receive no greater compliment than villagers singing his melody as their own. By the way, you’ll sometimes hear in town that Kéler died at home in Bardejov. He didn’t: he died in Wiesbaden, Germany. So one of the most played tunes in classical music has this town in its original title. And almost nobody knows it.

What to see in Bardejov Spa when you visit Bardejov

Bardejov Spa, where I stayed, is 6 km from town. It has eight mineral springs in a covered colonnade, the oldest open-air museum in Slovakia and lookout towers in the hills around. I split my time so that two days belonged to the spa and one to the town. Here’s my guide to what to see in Bardejov Spa.

*This article was created in collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism and Sport of the Slovak Republic and the Šariš Bardejov Regional Tourism Organisation.

Happy travels!