Tours · Bratislava · Statue
Bosorka (The Witch)
A languid bronze woman with loose hair and a circle of adoring birds reclines on the slope below Bratislava Castle. This is Bosorka, the Witch, a sculptor's quiet rebellion against centuries of fear and persecution.
About this place
Tucked onto the wooded hillside between the Old Town and Bratislava Castle, near St. Nicholas Orthodox Church on Mikulasska street, sits one of the city's most thought provoking sculptures. Created by the Slovak artist Tibor Bartfay in 1989, Bosorka, meaning the Witch, deliberately overturns the grotesque hag of folklore. Instead of a hooked nose and a broomstick, Bartfay gives us a beautiful, scantily clad young woman seated on stone, her hair flowing freely, surrounded by birds that gaze at her with open admiration. The work is an allegory and a memorial, a tribute to the countless real women across Europe who were accused of witchcraft and met cruel deaths. In old Bratislava such women were said to have been drowned in the Danube or burned at the stake, and Bartfay's gentle figure asks the passerby to see them not as monsters but as victims of fear and ignorance.
Key facts
- 1989 year — Tibor Bartfay created this bronze allegory of the unjustly accused witch
- 1602 year — Bratislava recorded its first execution of a woman condemned for witchcraft
- 1 woman — A single reclining figure, surrounded by admiring birds, forms the whole sculpture
📍 Mikulášska, 814 58, Bratislava