Dunaújváros

 

Dunaújváros (before 1951: Pentele or Dunapentele, between 1951 and 1961: Stalin City) is a county town in the Central Transdanubia region, in the south-eastern part of Fejér County, on the right bank of the Danube. It is the seat of the Dunaújváros district, the second most populated settlement of the county after Székesfehérvár. It is one of the highest income settlements in Hungary, a major economic, cultural and sports center, as well as a university city.

In ancient times, an important military settlement of the Romans called Intercisa lay on its territory. Pentele, a market town significant since the modern era, has been developed into an industrial city since the 1950s. Its architecture is a unique asset across Europe.

 

Location
Dunaújváros is located on the eastern edge of Mezőföld, on the right side of the Danube, 67 kilometers from Budapest, near the triple border of Fejér, Bács-Kiskun and Tolna counties. The city is divided into three major parts. To the north, the old town of Dunaújváros, the so-called Pentele is a part of the city, which is the inner part of the former Dunapentele that has been built for centuries. It was built south of the Old Town in the 1950s - in the administrative area of ​​Dunapentele - on the Pentelei plateau rising high above the Old Town. New Town (“the first socialist city”), which, however, was never separated from Dunapentele, was an administrative unit throughout. The Danube Ironworks was built south of the city, which is separated from the city by significant protected forests. The city is located at an altitude of 116 meters above sea level, bordered on the east by a stretch of the Danube for about 10 kilometers, and on the west by a gentle hill.

Districts (from north to south):

Északi Ipari Park
Táborállás
Szalki-sziget
Óváros
Újpentele
Újtelep
Római városrész
Felső-Dunapart
Béke városrész
Kertváros
Technikum városrész
Dózsa városrész
Belváros
Dunasor
Barátság városrész
Dunaferr
Déli Ipari Park

 

History

The excavated finds also prove that this area was already inhabited in prehistoric times. The first significant settlement, which flourished for about seven centuries, developed in the Bronze Age. It is known as Intercisa in Roman times, from which huge artefacts have survived, revealing that the Roman military camp established here with its associated bourgeois town played a significant role in protecting the Roman Empire's eastern border, Limes, against barbaric attacks. The conquering Hungarians settled in the area at the beginning of the 10th century. Excavations from a later age have uncovered the Pentele, which can be considered the predecessor of Dunaújváros and already exists in the Árpádian era, from a medieval Greek saint, St. Pantaleon, more precisely from the former Danube it was named after the patron saint of the abbey.

The village was under Turkish rule from 1541 to 1688, and during the Fifteen Years' War the population was completely extinct. In the 17th century, the Turks built a palisade castle on Rácdomb, the core of the village (market town). After the liberation from Turkish rule - similarly to several settlements along the Danube - the Hungarian population was replaced by raids. And when the serfs of the Danube villages refused to serve the labancas, Pentele also came under German occupation and was depopulated again. The Rác population of Pentele took part in the Rákóczi War of Independence, after the defeat of which the village would have been emptied again if no Hungarian settlers had been brought to the village. After that, however, the settlement started to develop. Although the deterioration of the serfs' situation after the cholera epidemic of 1831 led to a revolt - led by master boots Márton Szórád - in 1830, the village acquired the right to hold four national fairs a year and two weekly fairs a week. After a county investigation, the ruling, “benevolent” Ferdinand V, who was overthrown by a later palace coup, in 1833 (again) gave Pentele the rank of a market town.

During the War of Independence of 1848-49, the people of the town fought under the banner of Kossuth: according to the census of the “National Army” completed on May 28, 1848, the National Guard had 237 members (223 of them fit for military training); During the War of Independence, national guards and insurgents supervised the Danube crossing and the Pentele section of the Buda-Osijek road. After the fall of the War of Independence, Judge János Téglás was arrested and the revolutionary clerk of the city, Mihály Varga, was imprisoned. Most of the population was forced into the agricultural wage queue. During the administrative changes following the compromise, in 1870, Dunapentele was classified as a large village. At that time, the most important contemporary shaper of the intellectual image of the settlement, Pál Rosti, a world traveler, guidebook writer, geographer and ethnographer, and one of the first Hungarian photographers, moved permanently to Pentele. The scientist-born photographer from Pest was laid to rest in the Roman Catholic cemetery in Pentele. The other famous personality of the settlement, born here, is the painter János Molnár Pentelei (1878–1924).

The settlement suffered bomb damage during World War II.

At the end of 1949, the Central Leadership of the Hungarian Workers' Party decided to build a new, gigantic iron and steel plant and the associated housing estate, with the aim of creating the Hungarian socialist heavy industry.

The investment, originally dreamed of around Mohács, was looking for a new location due to the deteriorating Hungarian-Yugoslav relations, so the choice fell on a settlement on the edge of the field plateau: the most significant investment in the first five-year plan From October 24, 1956, a revolutionary atmosphere prevailed in the city. Power was really shocked by the revolutionary heat of the Stalinists. It is a fact that the last of the radio broadcasts that spread in Hungary during the revolution was the Rákóczi station in Dunapentele. The milestone of the subsequent consolidation period is that the name of the city - from 1961 - Dunaújváros. The Stalin Ironworks (back in 1956) became Dunai Vasmű, then Dunaferr Zrt., And most recently ISD Dunaferr Zrt. The group of companies is still one of the most significant industrial complexes in the country, which has played a major role in the fact that the city has found a real place in the country's economic and cultural life in recent decades and has become a major center in the eastern part of the Mezőföld.