Szentendre

Szentendre is a riverside town in Pest county, Hungary, on a countryside, near the capital city Budapest. It is known for its museums galleries, and artists. With a short travelling you can reach the beautiful small city.

Due to its historic architecture and easy rail and river access, it has become a popular village destination for tourists staying in Budapest, or travelling around in Hungary. There are many facilities, including souvenir shops and restaurants, catering to these visitors.

Life revitalized here multiple times during the centuries but the old walls remained, some of them are still standing on 2000-year-old foundations. Many artists painted the unique magic of the cheerful, sparkling colours, the evocative cobblestone streets, the fine-lined baroque steeples and the tiny downtown houses leaning against one another. But there is no need to be a painter in order to see the marks of Romans on the bank of the river or to imagine the warriors’ march to the Castle of Visegrád.

Szentendre (St. Andrew), the artist village, was named after its mediaeval patron saint. It is a typical Mediterranean village, situated on the slope of a hill in the beautyful nature, its small and narrow streets are running down to the river Danube. There are small shops, artists, cafés, restaurants and pubs. Your guide will take you around and tell you exciting stories about the history of Hungary. Optionally we can visit the Margaret Kovács Museum with the handcrafts of the Hungarian ceramical artist or the famous Confectionary Museum where you can see also the building of the House of Parliament made of marzipan.

One of Szentendre’s most famous spectacles, known all over Hungary, is the Hungarian Open Air Museum or „Skanzen”, stretching along 60 hectares, making it impossible to walk through it in a single day. Visitors may experience the folk architecture, dwellings and lifestyle of characteristic Hungarian regions from the end of the 18th until the beginning of the 20th century.

The houses and buildings representing a region are arranged following traditional settlement patterns. Peasant households are supplemented by religious, communal and agricultural buildings which used to be integral parts of traditional villages.

Arriving with a short travel to the Szentendre suburban railway station you can already see the BKV Urban Public Transport Museum, which promises a unique experience. One of the carriage houses of the suburban railway, built in 1914, was transformed into a travel and tranportation museum. In the exhibition hall you can familiarize yourself with the transport history of the Hungarian capital city and other big cities and you can also have a look at the unique collection of trams, suburban railway cars and other vehicles.

The Ceramics Museum of the Kossuth Prize-winner sculptor Margit Kovács was opened to the public in 1973. The museum, which had been the most visited public collection of Hungary for almost two decades, is situated in the salt-depot built in the 18th century, which was once the post-house then the house of the Vastagh family.

The museum contains 11 exhibition halls showing more than 300 works of the ceramist uniting distant nations’ traditions with Hungarian folklore, including terracotta and chamotte plastic arts, reliefs and figurines.

The Ćiprovačka, now known as Saint Peter-Paul Catholic Church is the biggest church in Szentendre, was originally built according to the traditions of the Orthodox Church. At the beginning it was made of wood but it was reconstructed from stone in 1750, consecrated to Saint Peter-Paul in 1796. In the 20th century, after the Serbians resettling back home, the Roman Catholic Church became the owner of the Ćiprovačka.