Slovak National Uprising Square, Banská Bystrica

Slovak National Uprising Square (Námestie Slovenského národného povstania), or SNP Square (Námestie SNP) is an area in central Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, named after the insurgency of 1944. It has been the hub of the city's life and a prestigious address for more than 600 years. During the 20th century, the square saw periodic mass gatherings celebrating first national independence, then the defeat of the uprising after which it is now named, and finally the memory of the event. Dotted by cafés, restaurants, and small stores, it is a popular place for the locals to linger, and a tourist attraction notable for its historical buildings, and visual appeal. The whole square is a free public WiFi hotspot.

The central area surrounded by merchants' and businessmen's homes was known as the (town) "Square," Ring in German (literally: "circle," a word used in the sense of "a marketplace" in the past) and Rínok in Slovak, for centuries. After Banská Bystrica was granted its Royal Charter in the 13th century, the "Square burghers" (Ringbürger in German, circulari in Latin) with residences at the Square attained special privileges among the citizens of the royal free town (a self-governing municipality outside the county jurisdiction − directly under the monarch and with its own representation in the Diet). The word Ringbürger remained an honorific, "Esteemed Citizen," in Banská Bystrica through the 19th century.

When new town squares developed elsewhere in Banská Bystrica, the central one came to be called "Main Square" (Slovak: Hlavné námestie; the town had a Slovak majority, a German minority, with a scattering of Hungarians by the end of the 18th century). Budapest formalized the name in its Hungarian version (Fő tér) in the 1860s as part of a drive to assign Hungarian names to all the country's localities, and emphasized history in 1886 by renaming it "King Béla IV Square" (Hungarian: IV. Béla király tér, Slovak: Námestie kráľa Bela IV.) after the monarch who granted Banská Bystrica its Royal Charter in 1255.

The name of the central square remained the politicians' target in the 20th century. By 1923 it had already been renamed "Masaryk Square" (Masarykovo námestie) after the country's first president Tomáš Masaryk, shortly after Czecho-Slovakia (soon unhyphenated as Czechoslovakia) was created in 1918. The square saw a massive gathering to celebrate the new statehood during President Masaryk's visit in 1923. Banská Bystrica became the administrative center of the Central Slovak District, which enhanced the role of the square in the social, economic, and political life of the region.

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