from the early 15th century A market town with burghersMestečko s mešťanmi

From the beginning of the fifteenth century the documents call Slatina a mestečko, a market town, and its inhabitants mešťania, burghers. That is a real legal step up from a village: the right to hold markets, and inhabitants with the standing of townspeople rather than peasants. It never became a walled royal town like Zvolen or Banská Bystrica and it never became rich. But for several centuries this was the place on the road east out of the basin where things could be bought and sold, which is why a village of farmers had burghers in it at all.Od začiatku 15. storočia nazývajú listiny Slatinu mestečkom a jej obyvateľov mešťanmi. Oproti dedine je to skutočný právny posun: právo trhu a obyvatelia s postavením mešťanov, nie sedliakov. Kráľovským mestom s hradbami ako Zvolen či Banská Bystrica sa nikdy nestala a nikdy nezbohatla. Niekoľko storočí to však bolo miesto na ceste na východ z kotliny, kde sa dalo kupovať a predávať — a preto mala roľnícka dedina vôbec nejakých mešťanov.