Visegrád Summary
Visegrád
Summary
Summary
Is the Summit of the central-European countries in 1991 was held in Visegrád, and the co-operation agreement between three and later four countries (Hungary, Poland, the Check Republic, and Slovakia) received its name from the place, it became one of the most frequently mentioned settlements of the country: its name became known to the whole world after the agreement was signed here. Visegrád, however, also played an important role in the history of Hungary. During its days of glory, it was a royal town, and with its unique ensemble of monuments, the Solomon tower, the citadel, and the royal palace it has attracted several millions of tourists until now.
The unique location of the place, bordered by the Danube, and surrounded by mountains and hills, offers one of the most beautiful views of the Danube-bend in the whole country. A favourable turn of history could only save this picturesque place at the last minute from being ruined by a monstrous concrete hydraulic power station – the Bős-Nagymaros “danosaur” – and an artificial pond designed next to it.
The location of Visegrád is of strategic importance. The Castle hill offered a view and the possibility of control over the main road and waterway between Esztergom and Buda. The settlement and its vicinity have been populated since very early times. The limes, the fortress wall to protect the Roman borders was running along the right bank of the Danube.
The camp on the Sibrik-hill, and the fortress in Gizellamajor, built close to the settlement, played important roles during the age of the Roman Empire in Pannonia.
The Sibrik-hill was also an important strategic point during the early Arpadian Age – in the centuries following the settlement of the Hungarian tribes in the area –, this was the place where the bailiff's castle, and the archdeacon's church were built. The kings of the Arpad dynasty also stayed most of the time in the Danube-bend, Esztergom and Buda. Most of the area was a royal estate.
After the Mongolian invasion, king Béla IV. established a new defence centre here, the citadel, the lower castle and the Solomon tower were built. The royal seat was also transferred to Visegrád at the beginning of the XIV. Century, and the first “summit meeting” of the central-European states was also held here, when on the initiative of the Hungarian ruler, the Polish and Check sovereigns negotiated about the future of the region with the representative of the German orders. The Hungarian crown was also preserved here in the citadel intermittently until the Turks appeared. All this had the result that Visegrád could identify itself as a civic town by the 1400-ies, and as a prestigious home of its well-to-do tenants.
During the Turkish rule, both the settlement and the town – the latter one often having different masters – lost from their importance, and their fate was linked to Esztergom. The Hungarian population dispersed. The spontaneous settlement of the new population took place after 1690, when Hungarians, Germans, Slavs (Checks and Moravians), and Austrians arrived as the new settlers. Most of the population of the rejuvenated village were Germans who came from the small villages around Dillingen on the Danube in Bavaria. Further moves to the settlement also added mostly to the number of the German population, but as people did not arrive at the same time and from the same place, they quickly lost their own traditions, and created new traditions and a new dialect for themselves. The Bavarian nature of the latter one stands out from the basically Francish dialect of the surrounding villages.
The royal estate of Visegrád was granted to the Starhemberg dynasty in 1701. The owner himself did not live here. The small body of the estate with its centre in Visegrád consisted also of Nagymaros, Kismaros and Kisoroszi.
The expansion possibilities, and life circumstances of the settlement in the XVIII century were basically defined by its unique geographical features, the hilly and rocky area, 70 % of which was covered by forests, and all of which was barren. Visegrád could not make a living from agriculture, it was the forestry, shipping, and the quarry which could give bread to its people for many centuries. The economic elite of the emerging borough consisted of the entrepreneurial peasant citizens, who equally dealt with industry and agriculture, and whose position did not depend on their ethnic status.
The settlement lost its central estate managing role, and it only preserved this in relation to forestry.
Further sporadic German settlements increased the number of its population in the first half of the XIX century. By that time, the village had lost its earlier, almost unlimited right to use forests, and due to its scarce land and low number of plots, the fee estate system was only another hit, and its earlier right to use pastures was also abolished. The devastation caused by phylloxera made its economic life even more impossible, its significant vineyards were ruined.
Visegrád found its compensation in tourism initiated in the spirit of national romanticism, and the increased willingness of the citizens of the capital to spend their holidays here. By the turn of the century, the settlement became a fashionable resort place, and the upper middle-class of the capital built their own quarter of villas in here. After the compromise of 1867, the development of bourgeois civilisation was started locally as well, accompanied by a strong inclination of the people to organise themselves. The infrastructure of the settlement started to be built. All the developments (network of roads, trading, places of civil entertainment, promenades) served the interest of tourism.
The settlement survived all social set-backs (1919, 1945) with the careful survival technique of compromising, although the process of the developing and flourishing bourgeois civilisation was broken by the Communist turn in 1948. Its shops and places of entertainment were nationalised, the level of supply, public life, and civilisation fell back by about a hundred years. The settlement woke up from its sleep in the 1970-ies, when modern investments were made in infrastructure (road construction, the erection of a water and sewage pipeline system, and the construction of the swimming-pool in the Lepence forest), the activities of trading and catering were improving slowly, and its cultural life also started a slow development. German national education was started at the school. The network of shops got drastically enlarged after 1990, and civilian life and self-organisation started to emerge once again.
The settlement again became a town after the 1st. July 2000, and may face up to the challenges of the new millennium from this rank.
