Iron processing has a long tradition in Slovakia. For centuries, iron production has contributed to the economic and social development of the population as well as of all contemporary state formations in our country. Although the history of this industry is relatively well explored and published, the architecture of these industrial sites is practically unknown. The current state of threatened historical industrial buildings and sites of iron production of Slovakia as a result of the end of their production leads to vexing questions about the perspectives on the possible preservation and use of this industrial heritage segment. An essential condition for the positive resolution of these issues is a thorough knowledge and comprehensive evaluation of its cultural and social-economic potential, which is necessarily preceded by research.The urgency of documenting and preserving the physical evidence of Slovakia industrial heritage supports the recent dramatic demolitions of many production buildings and even entire industrial sites. The accompanying architectural discussion has confirmed the lack of systematic mapping and evaluation of our industrial heritage, and that traditional approaches to protection of the cultural heritage do not offer sufficient tools to evaluate and preserve these remnants of our industrial history. This situation has shown that the issue of industrial heritage is still a controversial subject in society, including architects and theorists. A frequent obstacle to evaluating the cultural and historical values of industrial sites is their evaluation as solitary objects. The understanding of the broader spatial context of the site, the urban dimension of the region is overlooked. Another problem now appears to be the communication barrier between research and acceptance of the value of heritage buildings by society.The aim of the dissertation was to identify the characteristic architectural features of the iron production sites on the territory of Slovakia in the historical overview. The purpose of the thesis was to point out the quality of the monitored industrial buildings. The work investigated the areas in operation between 1815 and 1948. The first step of the research was the analysis of historical context, followed by the mapping of the industrial sites and the identification of their preserved objects. The mapping results were the basis for determining the development line and the categorization of historical ironworks in the background of technological progress of production. The work examined the monitored areas from the whole to its individual parts - from the urban context to the description of the architecture of the production buildings. The research conducted in the dissertation was based mainly on the architect's perspective. Therefore, the work was focused on the transformation of the production technology (as one of the main determinants of the sites formation) as well as on the reflections of the architectural development and its manifestations in the monitored sector. Architectural features have been identified in individual development stages using schematics and diagrams.The dissertation presented an overview of the development of architectural aspects of iron metallurgy in Slovakia. By complex processing, the new look at the architecture of monitored sector was provided. The benefit of the thesis is the system of categorization of historical ironworks in Slovakia according to the range of iron processing and the level of technological progress. Based on information about the technology used, it allows categorizing and thus gaining insights into the composition and structure of today's unpreserved or incomplete historical sites even in the case of non-maintained map data. The presented categorization and synthesis of architectural features simplifies the process of further architectural research of the historical ironworks, thus it supports the sense of monumental protection of this industry.