Eger

Eger, this more than a thousand years old town, with its glorious historical past, its precious national monuments, wines and thermal waters is one of the most well known and visited towns of Hungary. Eger is called as a historical town, also as the town of baroque style, wines, students and curative thermal waters. The first church to be built on castle hill was that constructed for the bishopric of Eger, which was founded by the first Hungarian King St. Stephen. The bishop's castle, which was fortified after the Tatar invasion of 1241, underwent continual improvement up until the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1552, captain István Dobó and his handful troop of 2000 soldiers stood the attacks of the Turkish army counting 40.000, more than 40 days. Eger was built in Baroque Style, most of the buildings have this character. It became an important cultural and art centre in the 18th Century. Nearly 170 great works of the art from past centuries shows their untouched beauty – the Eger Castle and its fortress system, the castle museum, the Dungeon, the Ruin Gallery, the gothic Bishop’s palace, the Lyceum (catholic college), the Library of the Archdiocese, the Spekula Planetarium, the Periscope, the Palace of the Archbishop, the Bastion and Castle Wall around the town, the Turkish Bath, the County Hall, Wrought Iron Gate made by Henrik Fazola, the County Jail, Mercifuls’ Temple, the rococo garden pavilion, the baroque secondary grammar school, the Orthodox Parsonage House, the Rococo Kisprépost Palace, the Cathedral, the {aroque Cistercian Temple, the Rosalia-Chapel, the Baroque Minorita Curch, the Franciscan Temple, the Minaret, the Nagyprépost Palace, the Mercifuls’ Hospital, the Greek Church, the Archdiocese Centre of Collections, Telekessy István Museum of Chemist’s, Gárdonyi Géza Memorial Museum – . The town and environs is a historical wine region. Its population has engaged in grape and wine production for more than thousand years, producing such excellent wines as Egri Bikavér, Egri Leányka, Debrői Hárslevelű, Egri Chardonnay, Egri Cabernet Franc, Egri Cabernet Sauvignon, Egri Merlot, Egri Kékfrankos and Kékmedoc. The Eger Wine Region has gone through an extremely fast development since the political changes in Hungary in 1989. The area of plantations significantly increased thanks to the replanting of traditional (and new) varieties on the best vineyards such as Eged-hill and Pajdos. The AOC system -already used by developed western wine cultures and countries- has been accepted as well. Besides a State Winery, hundreds of small family wineries were established. Thanks to the professional enologists of these wineries, high quality wines characterise this Wine Region, which is well know in Europe. Several wine cellars are more than 400 years old and these days plenty of new wine cellars have been carved by miners. Therefore, one may say, Eger is the Bastion of Wines.

The curative thermal water of the region had been known since the 15th Century. Under the Turkish occupation of Hungary, many public baths were built and used, out of which the renewed bath of Arnaut Pasha, called Turkish Bath by the citizens of Eger, still welcomes visitors to cure. Just in the neighbourhood of the Turkish Bath can be found the Thermal open air bath of Eger and the swimming pool renamed after the famous swimmer, Bitskey. Besides the sights and monuments, repeatable programmes – concerts, outdoor festivals, folk and modern dance shows – welcomes the visitors of the region each year.

more info: http://www.eger.hu/