Institute of Landscape Ecology of SAS, which is proud of its 50-year tradition of biological and ecological research within the broader spatial dimensions, stands on a 5-year period of preparation and three-year existence of the Department of Biology and Landscaping of the Biological Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and on 10-year tradition of the Institute of Landscape Biology. Since its founding in 1965, the Institute has undergone three break periods, and currently is experiencing the fourth. The fist period was the establishment of the institute of Landscape Biology of Slovak Academy of Sciences in early 1965 to its disbanding in late 1974. It was a period of preparation and development of a new scientifi fild. The Institute of the original four workers who prepare its establishment, has grown in a decade to more than 100 workers. The second period was the abolition of the Institute of Landscape Biology and its merging with the Institute of Botany of SAS and the Institute of Limnology of SAS forming the Institute of Experimental Biology and Ecology, which was later merged into the Centre with other institutes. It was fiteen years of struggle for the preservation and promotion of this already accepted scientifi fild. The institute gave the basis for virtually all common units of the new institution. The third period was the revitalization of the Institute as the Institute of Landscape Ecology of SAS in the mid 1990s, after the so-called Velvet Revolution. It was formed mainly from the Department of Landscape Ecology of the Centre of Biological-Ecological Sciences of SAS (about 70 staff established on 1. October 1989 shortly before the so-called Velvet Revolution after many years of effrt (since 1983) to unify landscape research. This period, until early 1996, when Milan Ružička pass the baton to the new director Július Oszlányi, can be characterized as a search for a new position in the changed political and economic situation. The current fourth period, from 1996, entered the Institute into a situation of market economy, where its existence depends on the results of both national and international competition for grants, which, for their predominantly short-term nature and way of funding, do not provide great opportunities for a long-term conceptual development of the research institutes.