EN
The present study is based on research into the press, archive documents and literature of the time, as well as on more recent studies. The author traces the transformation of the city of Bratislava, which changed during the period 1918 - 1938 from a quiet provincial city into the important, modern, political, economic and cultural centre of Slovakia. In population it was the fourth largest city in the young Czechoslovak state. The city administration, elected local councils, the officials of Slovak national institutions that had been established in Bratislava and self-sacrificing enthusiastic personalities from various fields of social life all played important roles in this transformation. The period 1918 - 1923 was the initial phase of these changes, involving the end of the old Hungarian institutions and the creation of the new Czechoslovak state administration.