The starting point is SNP Square — an hour's walk through Renaissance portals, past the Thurzo House and the Gothic church, gives a good feel for what Banská Bystrica was like as a mining town in the 15th and 16th centuries. Then, five minutes on foot, stands the Brutalist building of the SNP Museum — a ticket costs around 8 EUR. The exhibition inside covers the uprising of August 1944 through authentic weapons, documents, and film footage, and it is rarely so clearly shown how a single local town was the center of one of the largest armed resistances in occupied Europe. The combination of these two parts of the city provides context that makes every other excursion from Banská Bystrica more meaningful.
