Eger

People have lived in the Eger basin since the Stone Age. King Stephen I founded a bishopric here around 1009 and the first cathedral rose on Castle Hill; Walloon settlers in the 11th and 12th centuries brought western culture and helped establish the vineyards. The Mongols burned the town in 1241, but it recovered, gained a stone fortress and reached a medieval peak in the 14th and 15th centuries, when forests were cleared for vines.

After Mohács the fortress faced the Ottomans. In 1552 Captain István Dobó and a small garrison held it against a far larger army — a story told by the poet Sebestyén Tinódi Lantos and, in 1899, by Géza Gárdonyi's novel Eclipse of the Crescent Moon. Rebuilt by Italian engineers, the castle was handed over in 1596, beginning 91 years of Ottoman rule in which Eger became the seat of a province, churches became mosques and baths were built. The Holy League starved it into surrender in December 1687.

The 18th century was Eger's golden age. Bishops rebuilt it in baroque, rococo and neoclassical style — the Lyceum, palaces, the county hall and churches — artists and craftsmen flocked in, the population rose from 1,200 in 1688 to more than 17,000 in 1787, and the vineyards grew twelvefold. Fires in 1800 and 1827 and a cholera outbreak followed; Eger became an archdiocese in 1804, and Archbishop Pyrker founded the first Hungarian teacher training college in 1828 and built the cathedral. Bypassed by the main railway, it remained a school town, the "Hungarian Athens". Its Jewish community was murdered in 1944. In 1968 the baroque centre was protected from redevelopment.

The siege of 1552 is the heart of Eger's identity. The castle, the statue on Dobó István tér and the castle festivities each July recall the defenders, and the legend that they drank red wine the Ottomans took for bull's blood lies behind the name Egri Bikavér. Gárdonyi's novel, one of the most popular in Hungary, keeps the story alive, and Turkish visitors now come because of the shared history too.

The church shaped the town. As the seat of an archdiocese, Eger has an unusual concentration of baroque churches, palaces and seminaries, and the Lyceum, with its frescoed library, observatory and camera obscura, grew into today's Eszterházy Károly Catholic University, founded in 1774 and owned by the archdiocese since 2021. Archbishop Pyrker's gift of paintings to the nation became the core of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.

The calendar is crowded with festivals: a spring festival, a feast of Bull's Blood in July, a baroque festival through the summer, a medieval market and a dance festival, and a festival in the cellar valley in August. Wine culture runs through it all, from the tasting rooms of Szépasszony-völgy to the harvest each autumn.

About 49,000 people lived in Eger at the 2022 census, the second-largest city in Northern Hungary after Miskolc and the county seat of Heves. Around a third of them live in Felsőváros, the largest housing estate, with its four- and ten-storey blocks; others live in districts of detached houses such as Lajosváros, on the hills of Almagyar and Hajdúhegy, or in the former village of Felnémet.

Industry arrived after 1945, including a large factory complex at Berva founded in 1951 and privatised in 1992, and several multinational companies now operate in the industrial zone east of town. The university, the church, county administration, wine and tourism are the other mainstays. Most visitors come for a single day, many of them from Slovakia.

Students give the centre a younger feel during term, and residents use the Archbishop's Garden, the thermal baths and the swimming pools designed by Imre Makovecz, while the Bükk hills just to the north offer forest walks.

Wine comes first in Eger. Egri Bikavér, Bull's Blood of Eger, is a blended red whose name was recorded by the early 19th century; it is made today in three quality tiers — classicus, superior and grand superior — and the Nagy- Eged Hill is the region's grand cru site. Kékfrankos, the grape known abroad as Blaufränkisch, is a major part of the blend. The traditional whites are Egri Leányka, Debrői Hárslevelű and Egerszóláti Olaszrizling, and Chardonnay and Pinot Noir have arrived more recently.

The cellars of the Valley of the Beautiful Woman are cut into soft volcanic tuff, and the moulds and fungi on their walls are said to help the wine age. Many cellars serve wine straight from the barrel alongside simple food, and the town is also known for Egri Víz, a brandy dating from the 18th century.

Restaurants in the centre serve the Hungarian classics: gulyás, in Hungary a soup of meat and vegetables seasoned with paprika; pörkölt, a stew of boneless meat, onion and sweet paprika; chicken paprikás with nokedli dumplings and sour cream; and palacsinta pancakes. In Szilvásvárad, in the Bükk to the north, trout and truffle dishes are local specialities, and the farmers' market hall on Katona tér sells local produce.