Gyor

About

It's won a European award for the protection of its historic heritage, notably the reconstruction of its Baroque centre. Churches, palaces, museums, characteristic corner-balconies and narrow lanes, are all charmingly vivid reminders of the town's long and varied history. The Bishop's Cathedral on Káptalan Hill, though having a beautiful exterior, houses some fascinating sacred objects within. Outstandingly, the reliquary of Ladislaus I, containing the skull of Hungary's revered eleventh-century saint-king. Gyor also possesses perhaps the most beautiful Baroque square in Hungary, Bécsi kapu tér (Vienna Gate Square), with every house a historic building. Following Király utca, a street full of Gyor's signature Baroque-style bay windows, brings you to the city's main square since the fourteenth century, Széchenyi Square. This is also chockful of Baroque buildings, and once the site of the Roman town Arrabona. The seventeenth-century Baroque Benedictine Church is well-worth exploring, if only for the ceiling pictures of the sanctuary and nave painted by Paul Troger.