Sárvár (german: Kotenburg or ; la, Bassiana; sl, Mala Sela) is a town in
Vas County,
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Cr ...
.
Sárvár lies on the banks of the River Rába at Kemeneshát. The population is nearly 16,000. The town has become a tourist centre of international renown.
Etymology
''Sár'' means "mud" in
Hungarian, and ''vár'' means "castle". The latter is a common ending for settlement names.
History
During the
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, Sárvár was used as a centre for the internment for Polish soldiers who had arrived in Hungary in 1939. Later, during the World War II, Sárvár was used as a concentration camp for the internment for thousands of Serb families expelled by Hungarian soldiers from their homes in northern Serbia in 1941.
Now, there is a monument and graveyard for hundreds of Serbs who died in Sárvár concentration camp.
Sights
Sárvár's notable sights include the
spa (with its famous medicinal water), a
Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including ...
church, an
arboretum
An arboretum (plural: arboreta) in a general sense is a botanical collection composed exclusively of trees of a variety of species. Originally mostly created as a section in a larger garden or park for specimens of mostly non-local species, man ...
, the park forest and the Csónakázó Lake. A number of rarities of cultural remains are shown in the exhibition halls of the Ferenc Nádasdy Museum.
Castle
Through the Nádasdy family, the castle of Sárvár, now called Nádasdy Castle, played a significant role in the progress of Hungarian culture in the 16th and 17th centuries. The first Hungarian book, The New Testament of 1541, was printed here. The knight's hall of the castle is decorated with the battle scenes of Lord Chief Justice
Ferenc Nádasdy (married to the notorious
Elizabeth Báthory
Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed ( hu, Báthori Erzsébet, ; sk, Alžbeta Bátoriová; 7 August 1560 – 21 August 1614) was a Hungarian noblewoman and alleged serial killer from the family of Báthory, who owned land in the Kingdom of ...
) and with scenes from the Old Testament.
The Nádasdy Castle and estate later became a property of the
kings of Bavaria
Kings or King's may refer to:
*Monarchs: The sovereign heads of states and/or nations, with the male being kings
*One of several works known as the "Book of Kings":
**The Books of Kings part of the Bible, divided into two parts
**The ''Shahnameh'' ...
, and the former
King Ludwig III died there in 1921, three years after being deposed. During the World War II, the castle was used as the retreat of Ludwig's grandson
Prince Albert of Bavaria.
Notable people
*
Péter Balassa, footballer
*
Alice Lok Cahana
Alice Lok Cahana (February 7, 1929 – November 28, 2017) was a Hungarian Holocaust survivor. Lok Cahana was a teenage inmate in the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Guben and Bergen-Belsen camps: her most well-known works are her writings and abstract paint ...
, Holocaust survivor and artist
*
Edward Eisner
Edward Eisner FRSE FIP (1929-1987) was a Hungarian-born physicist who was Professor of Applied Physics at the University of Strathclyde 1968-1987. He specialised in the physics of sound.
The "Edward Eisner Memorial Fund Award" is named in his hon ...
, physicist and professor
*
József Vass, politician
*
József Vida
József Vida (born January 9, 1963 in Sárvár, Vas) is a retired male hammer thrower from Hungary, who represented his native country at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea
Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special C ...
, hammer thrower
*
Takács de Saár Takács de Saár (in Hungarian: ''saári Takács'') is a Hungarian noble family. The family members mainly lived in Vas and Sopron counties and had their seat in Saár village, which since 1912 is a district of Sárvár
Sárvár (german: Kotenb ...
, noble family
*
Zoltán Stieber, footballer
British avian flu outbreak
The
Bernard Matthews
Bernard Trevor Matthews CVO CBE QSM (24 January 1930 – 25 November 2010) was the founder of Bernard Matthews Farms, a company that is best known for producing turkey meat products.
Early life
Bernard Trevor Matthews was born in 1930 in Bro ...
Sága Foods plant in Sárvár, that processes
turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula ...
s, has been implicated in the
H5N1
Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 (A/H5N1) is a subtype of the influenza A virus which can cause illness in humans and many other animal species. A bird-adapted strain of H5N1, called HPAI A(H5N1) for highly pathogenic avian influenza virus of type ...
outbreak in
Suffolk
Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
.
Twin towns – sister cities
Sárvár is
twinned with:
*
Seini, Romania
*
Sonntagberg, Austria
*
Steinheim an der Murr
Steinheim an der Murr is a town in the district of Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated on the river Murr, 9 km northeast of Ludwigsburg.
It is known worldwide for the Steinheim skull, the skull of an early human fou ...
, Germany
*
Uherské Hradiště, Czech Republic
References
External links
* in Hungarian, English, German and Czech
Accommodation in Sárvár
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sarvar
Populated places in Vas County
Spa towns in Hungary
Thermal baths in Hungary
Roman settlements in Hungary