Candles Against Water Cannons - Hviezdoslavovo námestie

About this place

Today Hviezdoslav Square is Bratislava's most elegant promenade, framed by the 1886 opera house of the Slovak National Theatre, the Hotel Carlton and the American and German embassies. On the evening of Friday, 25 March 1988, it became the stage of the first mass protest against communist rule in Czechoslovakia since 1969. Catholic dissidents led by František Mikloško and Ján Čarnogurský had announced a silent half hour of prayer for religious freedom and human rights. The authorities banned it, arrested the organisers that morning and even scheduled a hit film on television to keep people at home. Still, about 3,500 people gathered here with candles, and thousands more were blocked in the side streets. Watched by a political commission from the fourth floor of the Carlton, around a thousand security personnel drove cars into the praying crowd, turned two water cannons on it and waded in with batons, tear gas and dogs. Officially 141 people were detained and 14 injured. The world heard about it through Western radio, and twenty months later the Velvet Revolution ended the regime just as peacefully. A memorial from 2008, a stone hemisphere on a granite triangle beside the theatre, marks the spot, and 25 March is now Slovakia's Struggle for Human Rights Day.

Key facts

• 3500 people — Number of people who stood on Hviezdoslav Square with lit candles, while thousands more were blocked in the side streets.
• 141 people detained — Official number of people detained that evening; 14 were recorded as injured, and many more hid their wounds for fear of persecution.
• 30 minutes — Length of the silent vigil the organisers had announced, from 18:00 to 18:30, with burning candles as their only message.

Hear it on a guided audio walk