Esztergom

Castle Hill has been inhabited since the end of the last Ice Age, and the Romans built a fort here on the Danube frontier. After the Magyar conquest Grand Prince Géza built his palace on the old Roman site, and his son Vajk, later King Stephen I, was born there around 969–975. Stephen was crowned at Esztergom on Christmas Day 1000 or New Year's Day 1001, and he made it the seat of the archbishop who led the kingdom's ten bishoprics. Esztergom remained the royal residence and the centre of the Hungarian state until the Mongol siege of 1241, after which Béla IV handed the palace to the archbishop and moved to Buda.

The archbishops rebuilt and adorned the castle; in 1507 Archbishop Tamás Bakócz had Italian architects build the chapel that is the earliest and most significant surviving Renaissance building in Hungary. After Mohács in 1526 the town was besieged six times in seventeen years, and in 1543 Suleiman the Magnificent captured it. Esztergom became the centre of an Ottoman sanjak and a key fortress on the empire's north-western frontier. The poet Bálint Balassa died in the failed siege of 1594, and Ottoman rule lasted, with an interval, until 1683.

The baroque Watertown and town centre took shape after the reconquest, and the archbishopric returned in 1820. The new basilica, begun in 1822, was dedicated in 1856 with a Mass composed and conducted by Franz Liszt. After the Treaty of Trianon in 1920 Esztergom became a border town, and the bridge to Párkány, now Štúrovo, was destroyed in the Second World War. It reopened only in 2001, rebuilt with European Union support.

Esztergom is often called the Hungarian Rome or the town of Saint Stephen. As the seat of the primate of the Catholic Church in Hungary it is the country's ecclesiastical capital, and religious institutions shape its cultural life: the basilica, the Christian Museum with the largest church art collection in Hungary, the Cathedral Library of about 250,000 volumes, and a campus of the Pázmány Péter Catholic University near the basilica.

The basilica's music has a famous beginning. Franz Liszt wrote his Gran Mass, named after the town's German name, for the consecration of 1856 and conducted the premiere himself. Visitors also come to the crypt where Cardinal József Mindszenty, remembered for his opposition to both Nazi and Communist rule, is buried.

The border is the other part of local identity. Esztergom and Štúrovo across the river form a single cross-border area, and two-thirds of Štúrovo's people belong to the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. Since the Mária Valéria Bridge reopened and both countries joined the Schengen Area, there are no border controls on the bridge, and lively cross-border traffic links the two towns.

The 2022 census counted about 28,600 people in Esztergom, the second-largest town in Komárom-Esztergom county after Tatabánya. Nearly a fifth of them live in Esztergom-Kertváros, a district about 5 km south of the centre that has grown together with the neighbouring town of Dorog. Since 2022 Esztergom has been a city with county rights.

A major employer is the Magyar Suzuki plant, opened in 1992 as the European base of the Japanese car maker, and the town has long been a centre of the Hungarian tool and machinery industry. Church institutions, the university campus, schools, tourism and cross-border trade make up much of the rest of the economy.

Life in the centre is quiet and provincial. The Watertown and the streets around Széchenyi tér hold the shops, cafés and offices, families walk along the Kis-Duna and on Primate Island, and the Aquasziget spa on Primate Island draws on the town's hot springs, which also gave the Watertown part of its name. Day visitors fill Castle Hill at weekends and in summer, while the evenings belong to residents.

Esztergom eats in the Danube style. Halászlé, the bright-red fisherman's soup made with plenty of hot paprika and carp or mixed river fish, belongs to the Danube and Tisza river regions and is one of the spiciest dishes native to Europe, and a natural dish for a town on the river. The restaurants around Széchenyi tér and in the Watertown serve the wider Hungarian repertoire.

Wine has deep roots here. The primates kept an extensive cellar system dug beneath Castle Hill and the basilica, now presented as a wine museum. Cafés in the town centre and along the Kis-Duna promenade serve cakes and coffee in the Hungarian coffee-house manner.

Across the river, Štúrovo's restaurants and supermarkets draw shoppers from both sides of the border, and its annual Fair of Saints Simon and Jude brings stalls and food to the Slovak bank. For many families in Esztergom, a meal or shopping trip in the next country is simply a walk over the bridge.