For two hundred and ten years — from 1613 to 1823 — Bojnice was a station on the royal post road, where riders and later coaches changed horses. That is a small fact with a large meaning: the empire's letters came through here on a timetable, and there were inns, stables and people whose living was the road itself. In the same period the Pálffys endowed the Piarist fathers in Prievidza, who opened a college there in the 1660s and gave the whole basin its schooling. Upper Nitra was quietly becoming a place people passed through on purpose rather than by accident.Dvestodesať rokov — od roku 1613 do roku 1823 — boli Bojnice stanicou kráľovskej pošty, kde jazdci a neskôr dostavníky prepriahali kone. Je to malý údaj s veľkým významom: cisárska pošta tadiaľto chodila podľa poriadku a boli tu hostince, stajne a ľudia, ktorých živila samotná cesta. V tom istom období obdarovali Pálfiovci piaristov v Prievidzi, ktorí tam v šesťdesiatych rokoch 17. storočia otvorili kolégium a dali celej kotline školu. Horná Nitra sa potichu stávala miestom, cez ktoré ľudia chodili zámerne, a nie náhodou.
