Stredná umelecká škola Ladislava Bielika, Vajanského 23, Levice (The Secondary Art School of LadislavBielik), is settled in town Levice in the Slovak republic. Its founder is self-governing province of Nitra and it is the only secondary art school in its competence. Nowadays, there are 198 students. The school provides a full secondary vocational education in art departments as promotional graphic, promotional art, photographic design, design-manufacturing design and clothing design. In the school year 2014/2015 the school also offers another art departments: scenic costume creation and advertising creation. Pedagogical staff represents 28 full certificated teachers. In study, students complete vocational and theoretical subjects where are taught two foreign languages, English and German. Nowadays, teachers innovate and modernize the education, they use IKT and with a constant study they improve their professional skills. One of the main tasks of the school is to prepare students for further study at university, effective incorporation to employment market or create business by themselves. To the reaching of goals of this process, students and teachers have appropriate equipment of school in education: ateliers, work-rooms, computers classrooms, language special classrooms, specific software and interactive boards.

The Secondary Art School of Ladislav Bielik in Levice has been wired to various international, national and regional projects as Socrates and Comenius for few years. In these projects the school co-operated with secondary and elementary schools in Italy-3 schools, in Poland, in Turkey, in Bulgaria. An attendance in 3 projects Socrates and Comenius represented a huge international experience for teachers and mainly for students. In the period of years 2011 and 2013 in ESF the school realized the project of operating program Education with the name School of creative education and nowadays it realize another project oriented on the reform of educational systems and specific preparation with the name Modern school for praxis. Throughout the realization of the first ESF project the school co-operated with several secondary art schools in the Slovak and the Czech Republic. Besides these projects the school regularly participates on national and regional art competitions and exhibitions and it has also been the administrator of minimal 3 own exhibitions of art works of teachers and students for11 years. With these activities the school especially supplies vocational and art preparedness of its students for further successful application.

Website - Stredná umelecká škola Ladislava Bielika, Levice, Slovakia

 

Levice

The first written record of Levice is from 1156 and mentions Martirius, the archbishop of Esztergom (Hungary), who consecrated the church in Bratka village dedicated to St.Martin. A parish was established where the villages "villa Leua" and Vitk were annexed .At that time the village of Leua (Levice) was a subject of  the Tekov castle, and was situated on the eastern part of today’s town of Levice, somewhere on the slopes of the vineyard, which is still called Old Levice. The castle in Levice was built in the 13th century, when the Tartar-looted Tekovsky castle’s importance had declined. The castle itself had been a fortress for protection of the mining towns. Under the protection of the castle in the 14th century a settlement known as "Big" or "Old Levice" had been established, which is  the real predecessor of today’s Levice town.

Today´s Levice is a modern district town with more than 50 000 inhabitants.

Sightseening

The Castle

The most significant building of the town is the castle fortress built in the second half of the 13th century on a steep hillside extending to a swamp.. At the walls of its eastern side some of the bastion lower parts still remain where a summerhouse was built in the 19th century (nowadays it is run as a teahouse). The fortress’s external walls, corner stone framing, the oldest Gothic palace’s portal, some parts of plaster and fortification still remain. In the 16th century the fortress was enlarged, strengthened by a bulwark. The other fortress buildings from the times of the Turkish wars close the lower bailey.The entrance to this building could only be approached from outside by means of the drawbridge. In the 17th century this castle was rebuilt in Baroque style and elevated by another storey. During feudal uprisings in the 17th century the castle was badly damaged. In 1702 Rákoczy’s rebels occupied the castle and before leaving Levice in 1709 they decided to destroy it. They burned it down, ruined the castle walls, filled the moats with rubble and thus the castle lost its function as a military fort. The less damaged buildings of the lower castle were later repaired and useless annexes were removed. Since 1958 the Tekov Museum has been situated here.

Churches

The Eszterházy family during the period from 1773 to 1780 built the Classicist parish-church of St.Michael Archangel on the site of the old church destroyed in the great fire. Over the main pediment front there is built on a double-tower superstructure. On the straight pediment between the towers is the statue of St.Ladislaus. The Classicist altar was built in 1793 and has a column architecture with symmetrically placed sculptures. In the middle there is a picture of St. Michael Archangel, from the painting by Quido Reni. Remarkable carved late-Baroque wooden benches from the middle of the 18th century show scenes from St.Francis’s life. The classicist epitaph of the Eszterházy family with a plastic family coat of arms and inscription dates from the year 1786.

Franciscan-Minoritesbuilt the Roman Catholic church of St. Joseph with an adjacent cloister building. In 1814 the Piarist order took the cloister over and opened a grammar school there. The church was rebuilt in 1773.

The first wooden Calvinist church was built in 1660, but due to its poor state it was pulled down. They started to build a new church on the same site but on the governor’s orders it was demolished. On the site of the previous churches there was erected a Classicist Tolerance church without a tower during the period of 1785-1788. In 1808 the church burned down but later it was restored and a tower was added to it. In front of the church there is a Baroque Classicist column erected in 1796 with a statue of Immaculate Virgin Mary on its top.

The synagogue is a Roman-Classistic building built in 1857. It is a hall-type Jewish house of worship with a gallery for women. There is a richly decorated triangular font on the entrance with plastic ornaments and heightening, which shows the Ark of the Covenant.

Monuments

The Classicist Holy Trinity Column(near the entrance to the castle park) was erected in 1777 and then renovated in 1790. On the column is the group of the Holy Trinity. On the base there were originally statues of St. Sebastian, St. John of Nepomuk, St. Roch and John the Baptist. Only two of them remain.

On the outskirts of the Nixbrot settlement stands the chapel of St. John of Nepomuk from the 19th century, with the painted statue of the saint inside.

At the northern part of Levice there is a monument to  Istvan Kohary, which was erected at the place of his death during the Turkish wars. A tree which came down in a storm had destroyed this monument but recently it has been restored.

In the centre of the town in the Hero’s square stands the Monument to the victims of the World War II.

Urban parts

The Baroque Mansionwas built in the 18th century for the Jánoky family. In 1820 it was rebuilt and enlarged in Classicist style. The stone statue of St.John of Nepomuk standing on a volute base by the road was originated in the beginning at the 19th century.

The Rococo-Classicist Roman Catholic Churchin Malý Kiar named The Glorification of the Saint Cross was built in 1777. Under the tower there is an organ choir. The organ with a three-part pipe cabinet was built in 1744.