Cultural tourism has undergone fundamental changes in several countries of post-socialist Europe. In Slovakia, this fact concerns, for example, localities with a strong connection to the church and its cultural heritage. These monuments belong to the foundations of cultural tourism, yet the state intentionally did not prefer them as tourist destinations until 1989. Only after political and social changes were such localities exploited by tourism with a qualitative and quantitative increase in cultural tourism. The aim of this paper is to investigate the recent changes in cultural tourism in urban areas and to address alternative cultural tourism products to diversify the offerings. To do so, Nitra (Slovakia) was used as a case study area. The main used methods were comparative analysis of information sources and questionnaire surveys, aimed at residents, entrepreneurs, and tourists. The main result is that Nitra has the potential to become an important center of cultural tourism/stage destination of various cultural routes. The presented results will increase awareness of the present and future of cultural tourism; they can be beneficial for organizations dealing with tourism management in the city (city office) and its marketing (Nitra Tourism Organization) for the academic and public sphere.

A chronological analysis of Christian pilgrimages over the course of around 2,000 years of existence suggests that there have been swings in their level of popularity: strong whenever the ruling classes (whether religious or civil) protect popular sanctuaries and declining whenever policies constraint the practice of pilgrimages. This paper starts with the characterization of two authoritarian regimes, a fascist one in a western European country, Portugal (1928Portugal ( -1974, and a communist one in a central European country, Slovakia (1948 -1989, at that time part of Czechoslovakia. The aim of this research was to explore the status quo during the period of government by the two authoritarian regimes, analyse the approach taken by each regime in regards to religious manifestations and how, with the eventual transition to democracy, it served to determine the dynamics surrounding each country´s main pilgrimage shrine, respectively Fatima (Portugal) and Levoča (Slovakia). The research findings show that in Portugal there was no interruption on the increasing popularity and development of Fatima, from the authoritarian to democratic regimes. Meanwhile, in Slovakia only after democracy was reinstated, was it allowed for people to manifest freely their religious beliefs that led to a revival of pilgrimages and visits to Levoča. The findings provide an understanding of the role of the state under authoritarian regimes and the policies implemented that prompted the importance and potential of the two shrines as religious tourism destinations.

The presented paper deals with the regionalization of the electoral support of the Czech Pirate Party (Pirates) in regional elections using methods and techniques of spatial data analysis. The aim is to answer the question whether the territorial distribution of Pirate electoral support allows this party to participate in governance at the regional level and thus influence the form of regional policy in individual regions. The results of the analysis show that the spatial distribution of Pirates’ electoral support in regional elections differed quite significantly not only from the pattern found in the elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament and elections to the European Parliament, but also between individual regional elections. This suggests the current lack of anchorage of Pirates’ electoral support in regional politics, but at the same time, it may have its origins in the second-order character of regional elections and the candidacy of many local and regional entities in regional elections. On the other hand, the results of the regional elections in 2020 meant that the Pirates received seats in all regional councils, but especially in nine of the thirteen regions they joined the regional government (similarly to two years earlier when they joined government of capital city of Prague), gaining the opportunity to influence, with regard to its priorities, the form of regional governance in most Czech regions.

Abstrakt: A key feature of contemporary tourism is massive investment on the part of developers in tourism-related urbanisation, with this made most manifest in the construction of recreational apartment houses, and the expansion of ski slopes and golf courses. For obvious reasons, such activities are directed at traditional centres of tourism, which respond to the current trend towards hedonism present in society. However, major development activity has also taken place in municipalities in which tourism only began to play its more significant part once social and political transformation had already occurred. An example is the Slovak municipality of Veľká Lomnica, a village in which golf-course construction has initiated large-scale development projects. The aim of the work described in this paper was precisely to address this example in assessing the impact of tourism-related urbanisation on the municipality in question.

Tourism is one of the most dynamic sectors of the economy in Slovakia. With the orientation of localities to tourism, the landscape transformation is reflected in several positive and negative changes in the landscape. The aim of the contribution is to highlight the transformation processes leading to the creation of a tourist landscape in six selected localities in Slovakia. When selecting sites, we applied criteria such as the diversity of the original use, size or attractiveness. The environmental, socio-cultural and economic impacts of tourism on the landscape of localities were valuable in terms of sustainable development principles. From the methodological point of view, the primary methodology was the drivers–pressures–state–impact–response (DPSIR) model, used for integrated environmental assessment and the life cycle methodology of a tourism center with integrated sustainable development indicators. In the work results, based on the analysis of the historical development and the current state of localities, we evaluate their phase of the life cycle and the effects of tourism on the environment. We also present the possibilities of further development and heading direction of localities from point of view of tourism while pointing out the benefits and risks connected with the planned development.