Balassagyarmat

This trading town, which once thronged with people of many nationalities, has a rich architectural past. The town is one of the centres of Palots ethnicity; their history is displayed in an open-air museum.

Having occupied Nógrád Castle the home-founding Hungarians settled in this area in the late 9th century. The second part of the town's name comes from the name of the Gyarmat clan.

Until the mid-13th century, around 1260, the Balassa family, which later gave the first part of the town's name, began to fortify the settlement. The first church, destroyed in 1241 during the Mongolian invasion, must have been raised in St Stephen's time. The new church and the parsonage were built by 1291.

In the early 15th century the Jewish religious community was established here, one of the first in Hungary. From the 1720's, gradually Greek, Serbian and German traders and manufacturers settled alongside the population of Hungarian and Slovakian descent.

In the second half of the 19th century a trading and finance market developed rapidly, also Balassagyarmat gradually became an educational town. The current townscape evolved around the 1890's.

Post World War I the citizens of Balassagyarmat took up arms on the 29th January 1919, and drove out the occupying Czechs attempting to push the borders of the new Czecho-Slovakian state further south. Their heroism resulted in 18 neighbouring settlements remaining with Hungary. For that reason, Balassagyarmat was named Civitas Fortissima, the title of the bravest town.

During World War II a significant part of the town was ruined: the Jewish population, once a third of the town's inhabitants, was decimated.

Among other places, their memory is preserved in the Jewish cemetery which is under heritage protection. Grave memorials can be found there from between the early 18th century until the 20th century.

Balassagyarmat's most prominent heritage buildings are the old Classical county hall and the church of the Serbian settlers, built in 1911.

How to get there:
By railway, trains run to Balassagyarmat from Vác and from Aszód. Coaches depart from Budapest and Salgótarján. By car, take Road 2 and at Rétság turn northeast onto Route 22.