Dominican church
A brief description.
Vác is a beautiful town on the left bank of the Danube River in Pest County in Hungary at the east gate of the Danube-Bend 35 km north from Budapest. The town is an important ferry. The town has got 35.535 inhabitants (1990 census) nearly all of them are Hungarians. Two of the Official Ethnic Minorities of Hungary have got ethnic council in the town. They are: Gipsy and Slovakian. The name of the town in Slovakian: Vacov, in German Waitzen.
The territory is populated from the Bronze Age. On the other bank of the river is a Roman fortification. (The Danube was the border of the Roman Empire. On the left bank was Pannonia Province.
The first mention of the town was in 1075. It was a borough and it was and is the seat of the Episcopate of Vác founded by King Saint Stephen. In Vác King Gáza I. is buried. In 1241 the Mongols (Tatars) who devastated the Kingdom of Hungary, lead by Batu Khan burned down the city and killed its inhabitants. The Bishop of Vác settled Germans in the city. In the Middle Ages Vác was one of the important cities of Hungary. In 1485 the city was the place of the diet convened by King Mathias Corvinus. 3 years after the occupying of Buda by the Ottomans (1541), Vác was occupied too. The Turkish years destroyed the Gothic-Renaissance city. After the relief of the castle in 1686 the town had got just a few settlers and ruins. In the next century was the second golden age in the history of the town. The Bishop Migazzi had built the Baroque town in these years. At Vác was the end of the first Hungarian Railway line (Pest-Vác) in 1846. In 1849 two battles of the independent war were here.
Source: István Molnár, 11 July 2000.
In Vác the Dominicans built a church between 1699 and 1775, known as 'Fehérec Templona' : 'The White Brothers' Church', with a rococo-decoration from 1760. They had to leave Vác in 1778 and the church is now the parish church of the 'Felsövárosi', the upper town of Vác. Above the main altar the painting 'Christ and the Apostles' by C.V. Savoy (1664).
Philately
Hungary 1974, Mi 3001, Sc 2325.
On the background the parish church 'the Queen of the Rosary' with two towers, former the Piarist Church of Saint Anna.
Return to REGISTER B Return to HOMEPAGE