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SZENTENDRE |
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With its fabulous Baroque heart, SZENTENDRE (St Andrew), 19km north
of Budapest, is unlikely to disappoint. Called the "the Montmartre of
the Danube" by Claudio Magris, it remains a delightful maze of houses
painted in autumnal colours, with secretive gardens and lanes winding up
to hilltop churches. The town's location on the lower slopes of the
Pilis range is not only beautiful, but ensures that Szentendre enjoys
more hours of sunlight than anywhere else in Hungary, making it a
perfect spot for an artists' colony.
Before the artists moved in, Szentendre's character had been formed by
waves of refugees from Serbia. The first influx followed the
catastrophic Serb defeat at Kosovo in 1389, which foreshadowed the
Turkish occupation of Hungary in the sixteenth century, when Szentendre
fell into ruin. After Hungary had been liberated, the Turkish recapture
of Belgrade in 1690 precipitated the flight of 30,000 Serbs and Bosnians
led by Patriarch Arsenije Carnojevia, 6000 of whom settled in Szentendre,
which became the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church in exile.
Prospering through trade, they replaced their wooden churches with stone
ones and built handsome town houses. However, as Habsburg toleration
waned and phylloxera (vine-blight) and floods ruined the local economy,
they began to trickle back to Serbia, so that by 1890 less than a
quarter of the population was Serb. Today, around one hundred families
of Serbian descent remain.
In 1928, thanks to its close proximity to Budapest and the excellent
light conditions, Szentendre became a working artists' colony, and today
its links with art are as strong as ever, with some two hundred artists
working here and the town's countless museums and galleries vying for
the attention of the peak-season tourist crowds. The town is extremely
popular and can get swamped in the summer months, but it's still
possible to escape the tourists and enjoy the quieter side of the place.
A good time to visit is for Szentendre's summer festival ( Szentendrei
Nyár ), which runs from late June to late August and encompasses jazz
and folk music evenings, organ concerts, dancing and theatrical
performances; it culminates with a pop concert and fireworks on August
20. On the preceding day, a Serbian festival with kolo (circle) dancing
takes place at the Preobrazenska Church. Tourinform can furnish you with
more specific information on the festival's events.
The Town
Most of Szentendre's main tourist attractions are centred on the main
square, Fo tér. On your way in from the station, along Kossuth utca, you
can make a detour to examine a hoard of Roman stonework at Dunakanyar
körút 1 (March-Oct Mon-Fri 10am-4pm); turn left up Római sánc köz and
carry straight on up for five minutes. Its opening times are unreliable,
however, and you may have to look at the stones from behind the wire
fence. The eroded lintels and sarcophagi belonged to Ulcisia Castra, a
military town named after the Eravisci, an Illyrian-Celtic tribe subdued
by the Romans during the first century AD.
Back on Kossuth utca, another five minutes' walk up the street, just
before the Bükkos stream, you'll encounter the first evidence of a
Serbian presence - the Pozarevacka Church (Fri-Sun 11am-5pm; 100Ft).
Typical of the churches in Szentendre, this was built in the late
eighteenth century to replace an older wooden church, although its
Byzantine-style iconostasis was inherited rather than specially
commissioned. Beyond the stream, Dumtsa Jeno utca continues past the
Tourinform office on the corner at no. 22, and the Marzipan Museum and
Pastry Shop at no. 12 (daily 10am-7pm; 200Ft), where the marzipan
creations include a model of the Hungarian parliament; a plaque on the
wall opposite marks the birthplace of nineteenth-century Serbian
novelist Jakov Ignjatovic, who created the Serb realist novel. Further
up on the right is the Barcsay Collection (Tues-Sun: March-Nov 10am-6pm;
Dec-Feb 1-5pm; 300Ft), a museum housing drawings and paintings by Jeno
Barcsay (1900-88), who was born in Transylvania but lived and worked in
Szentendre from 1928. His dark prewar canvases give way to more abstract
works after the war, avoiding the strictures of the regime. His
anatomical drawings at the end of the display confirm his skill as a
draughtsman. During the summer festival, concerts are held in the
courtyard of the museum.
A little further on, the road is crossed by Péter-Pál utca, where a left
turn brings you to the Peter-Paul Church , a yellow and white Baroque
church built in 1708. Its original furnishings were taken back to Serbia
after World War I, and the church is now Roman Catholic. Organ recitals
take place at the church regularly; ask at Tourinform for details. From
here, or from the last uphill stretch of Dumtsa Jeno utca, it's just a
block to the main square.
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