Sopron (German: Ödenburg, Croatian: Šopron, ancient Latin:
Scarbantia) is a county town of about sixty thousand inhabitants in
Győr-Moson-Sopron County, the center of the Sopron wine region. “The
Most Loyal City” (Latin: Civitas Fidelissima). It is the seat of the
Sopron district.
It is the second richest settlement in
Hungary in terms of monuments. It is the 9th most popular settlement
in Hungary in terms of guest nights spent in commercial
accommodation. In 2016, the renovation of the Castle Wall Promenade
and the Castle District received an ICOMOS award.
Location
It is located on the western border of Hungary, on
the foothills of the Alps, 60 km from Vienna and 220 km from
Budapest. It was built between the Sopron Mountains and the Balfi
Hills near Lake Neusiedl, in the valley of the Ikva stream.
The microclimate of the area is conducive to wine production; Sopron
is the "capital of Kékfrankos".
Transport
inland
Road
No. 84 connecting the city with Balatonederics via Sárvár. on the
main road, from Budapest and Győr (via Nagycenk) on the main road
85, and by train from Budapest and Győr on the GYSEV railway line 8,
from Szombathely on the railway line 15. The section of the M85
motorway reaching Sopron is expected to be handed over in 2020 to
the Fertőrákos junction. In 2024, the M85 motorway, which bypasses
the city from the north and leads to the border, may be completed,
including the Sopron tunnel.
Abroad
The A3 - A2 motorway
offers a fast road connection to the province of Burgenland in
Austria. The Sopron-Deutschkreutz railway line operates as a
corridor railway. There is also a single-track non-electrified
railway line to Austria and a single-track electrified railway line
to Ebenfurt-Vienna.
History
The area has been inhabited
since prehistoric times. In the nearby Castle Place during the Early
Iron Age, the i. e. An earth castle was built in the 7th century.
The excavation of this Hallstatt earthen castle and the associated
mound tombs was started in 1887 by Lajos Bella, a teacher and
archaeologist from Sopron.
In Roman times, a town called
Scarbantia stood here, through which two important routes passed.
His forum was on the site of today's main square. During the
construction of the present town hall in 1897, the three large Roman
statues depicting Jupiter, Jun, and Minerva were unearthed from
here.
During the migration, Scarbantia remained in ruins, a
new settlement was established here only after the conquest. The
inhabitants of the city in the AD. In the 4th century, a 3–4 m thick
city wall was erected in the area of the later downtown to protect
themselves from the attacks of the barbarians. This wall was
probably demolished during the era of migration. In 1092, the castle
serfs of Sopron erected the wooden-framed, earth-reinforced rampart
of the new border castle on its remains. The wooden frame later
became the prey of the fire, and the rammed clay burned into slag.
This mysterious “red rampart” was excavated by modern constructions
in several parts of the city center, including the construction of a
reinforced concrete wall protecting the back wall of Esterházy
Palace.
A 9–11. Around the 16th century, the old Roman city
wall was completed and the castle was rebuilt. It was then that he
got his Hungarian name from the town's supran, named Suprun. It was
already mentioned in 1153 as an important city.
In 1273 II.
The Czech king Ottokár occupied the castle as a result of betrayal.
Despite the fact that Ottokár took with him the children of the
city's nobles as hostages, Sopron opened its doors in 1277 in the
4th century. Before King László, who thus managed to reclaim it, he
made it a free royal city as a reward. Then, between 1297 and 1340,
an 8–10 m high castle wall surrounded by moats was built on Roman
foundations, on the inner plane of which the houses of the city
center rested.
On February 25, 1441, Widow Queen Elizabeth of
Luxembourg pledged Sopron and her surroundings for 8,000 gold. To
the German-Roman emperor Frederick. The city was reclaimed only by
Mátyás Hunyadi, who agreed with Frederick on July 19, 1463, to
return the crown and the pledged areas for 80,000 forints.
In
1526 the population of the town expelled the Jews from Sopron.
In 1543 the city council forbade "foreign Hungarians" to take a
house, and in 1594 it excluded the Hungarian language from city
administration.
In 1529, the Turks ravaged the city, but it
did not fall into the hands of the Turks. Many of the occupied
territories fled to Sopron, which slowly became the center of a
territory free of Turks. In 1553, 1622, 1625, 1635 and 1681 a
parliament was also held here.
In 1605, Sopron was overthrown
by Bocskai's armies. In the following decades, therefore, the people
of Sopron strengthened their city even more, building new bastions
and city walls. In the plague of 1655, half the population perished.
In 1676, Sopron burned down completely. Then baroque buildings were
erected on the site of the old medieval buildings, today’s downtown
was born. It was then that the Fire Tower was also rebuilt.
The Rákóczi War of Independence was not supported by the city, it
still withstood the siege of the Kuruc in 1705, but a year later
János Bottyán took over the city. II. In the time of József, Sopron
became the seat of Sopron County.
In 1753, the first coal
mine in Hungary was opened in the forest of Sopron, later called the
Brennberg Mine, which became one of the most modern mines in the
country by the last decades of the 19th century.
The medieval
defense system was obsolete by the 18th century, so in some places
the city wall was demolished and several bastion gardens, still
visible today, were created on top of the bastions. One of them
hides behind the Esterházy Palace, with a round-domed music pavilion
built in 1789, open at the front.
At the encouragement of Széchenyi, the first railway in
Transdanubia was built, connecting Sopron with Vienna and Vienna.
Being close to the border, Sopron was occupied early by Imperial
troops in the 1848 War of Independence. It then developed nicely
until the early 20th century, although its development slowed from
the late 19th century, its economic weight declined. In 1890, the
first rural telephone exchange was built here. Tram traffic started
in the city in 1900, but the two-line network did not prove
profitable in the long run, so it was abolished in 1923.
In
1919, the Academy of Banská Štiavnica was relocated from Banská
Štiavnica, the legal successor of which is the College of Mining and
Forestry.
In 1921, after the Treaty of Trianon, a referendum
of purity disputed by Austrian contemporaries and historians decided
which country Sopron and the surrounding eight villages belonged to.
The majority of Sopronians chose Hungary. The event was commemorated
by a memorial law in 1922, and has since been called “The Most Loyal
City” (Civitas fidelissima). The day of the decision, December 14,
is the celebration of Sopron. Offices remained bilingual until
deportation in 1946, when, according to official figures, 2005 a
native German-speaking person had to leave the city.
The city
suffered a lot in the II. in world war. In 1944 he was hit by
several airstrikes. The Jewish population of the town (1857 people)
was transported almost entirely to death camps in the summer of
1944, 325 of those deported returned, and most of the others were
murdered. In the mass graves around Sopron, 2181 labor corpses who
died of starvation and epidemics were buried. From December 1944 to
March 28, 1945, the Arrow Cross ruled the country essentially from
Sopron. Mortality figures for the city’s population painted a
frightening picture during the Arrow Cross rule. Associations and
local newspapers were banned, and a significant portion of the
population was assigned to build ramparts that were completely
meaningless from a military standpoint. With tens of thousands
(according to some sources, hundreds of thousands) of refugees,
Arrow Cross party members, soldiers and gendarmes, the city was
hugely swollen with food shortages and epidemics struck. From
January 17, 1945, the local youth organization of the Arrow Cross
Party had "enlisted" 12-year-old boys. Even in the days before the
March 29 escape of the Arrow Cross, dozens of young people were
gathered on the city streets.
The city was occupied by the
Soviets on April 1, 1945.
Although the II. After World War
II, significant industrial development unfolded in Sopron as well,
the mine was closed in 1951 due to the impossibility of mining
(water intrusions), and in the 1950s the college's mining
engineering faculty was relocated to Miskolc (today the forestry
engineering faculty is part of Sopron University). The charming
baroque image of the city has been preserved. In the Kádár system,
very significant monument protection works were carried out in the
city, and due to the spectacular results, the city deservedly
received the gold medal of the European Prize for Monument
Protection in 1975.
The hilly area to the south and west of
the town has been listed in the charters since 1225 as a watchtower
for former archers. This is the holiday resort of Lővérek (Lőverek,
Lövérek - language use fluctuates), Sopron. Here stands the Chapel
of St. John of Nepomuk and the Column of Mary. On the northwestern
edge of the city, the Yerevan housing estate was built between 1973
and 1985, mostly from the panel elements of the Győr house factory.
The border was opened on 19 August 1989 during a so-called
pan-European picnic, which was used by hundreds of GDR residents to
flee to Austria.
From 7 May 2010, companies in the Sopron
area launched a money replacement paper voucher called a blue franc
in Sopron for the purpose of economic recovery.
On April 18,
2016, the city received an ICOMOS award for the restoration and
renewal of the Castle Wall Promenade, which was handed over in 2012,
and the Castle District, which was renovated in 2015.
Curiosities
In 2012, the highest annual precipitation was
measured here. At the Muck Lookout, 844.8 mm of rain fell this year.