Countryside Guides: Esztergom

The mark left by Esztergom on Hungarian history is considerably more significant than today`s sleepy town would suggest. This goes some way towards explaining why a city with a population of just 29,000 is still the country`s most important ecclesiastical center and seat of the Catholic Church. This is hard to forget when you see how the monumental Ezstergom Basilica dominates the entire landscape. The history of the town itself is equally striking.

Hungary`s first Christian king, St. Stephen (István), was born in Esztergom in 975 and crowned in the town in 1000 - the settlement preceded both nearby Visegrád and Buda as a royal seat between the 10th and 13th centuries. When the Buda-bound royal family abandoned the palace, the archbishop moved in to its former residence. Later, the Turks came, conquered and were driven out in 1683, before in 1822, work on the current basilica was begun - both as a farewell to the Turks and a statement of the returning to power of the Catholic church.

Today, Esztergom is a small, sleepy settlement dwarfed by its improbably large basilica, and overshadowed by the more famous Danube Bend town of Szentendre. Nevertheless, the town itself is well worth a stroll, and reveals a few gems of its own, such as the Castle Museum and the Christian Museum, which boasts one of the region`s finest collections of ecclesiastical art. It also is notable for the bridge over the Danube (Duna) into neighboring Slovakia, which was re-dedicated in 2000, becoming the last such crossing destroyed in World War II to be rebuilt, as well as the recently-opened Aquasziget, an indoor-outdoor aquapark offering year-round fun for all ages.

Sue Healy
www.caboodle.hu - Monday, August 14, 2006