Flag of Slovakia

How to read it

Article 9 of the constitution of 1992 describes the flag as three horizontal bands, white, blue and red, with the state emblem on its left half, and the emblem as a red early Gothic shield with a silver double cross on the raised central hill of three blue hills. The Act on the State Symbols (63/1993) adds the detail: the stripes are of equal width; the arms sit the same distance from the top, the edge by the pole and the bottom of the flag, and are half as high as the flag; where the shield meets a colour other than white it has a white border a hundredth of the flag’s length wide; and the flag is 2 by 3. The silver of the cross may be shown as white. The arms were adopted on 1 March 1990, and Slovakia took the tricolour again in 1993, Store norske leksikon says.

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Telling it from the Slovenian and Russian flags

Russia’s flag has the same white, blue and red stripes with nothing on them, and the same ratio of 2 to 3. The Slovak arms are there for that reason: the plain tricolour was identical to the flag Russia had before 1917 and brought back in 1993, so Slovakia had to put its arms near the pole, Store norske leksikon says.

Slovenia’s flag is also white, blue and red with a coat of arms, but it is twice as long as it is high, and its arms show Mount Triglav in white over two wavy blue lines for the sea and rivers, under three gold stars, as Slovenia’s constitution describes them. Serbia’s stripes run the other way, red, blue and white from the top.

The double cross and the three hills

The double cross honours the missionaries Cyril and Methodius from Byzantium, who brought Christianity to the West Slavs, Store norske leksikon says. The arms have much in common with Hungary’s, since Slovakia was part of Hungary from the Middle Ages. In the revolutionary year 1848 the Slovak National Council took these arms and changed the hills from Hungary’s green to blue, so that both arms and flag have the Slavic colours. The present version was drawn in 1990 by the heralds Ladislav Čisárik and Ladislav Vrteľ for the Slovak Interior Ministry.

An older tricolour

The white, blue and red tricolour has been used since the middle of the nineteenth century, sometimes with the colours the other way round, Store norske leksikon says. From 1920 Slovakia shared the flag of Czechoslovakia, which the Czech Republic kept; when the two separated, Slovakia took the white, blue and red stripes again in 1993.