Art Monuments in Hungary [antikvár]

Art monuments in HungaryThe purpose of this publication is to acquaint the visitorwith a few typical historic buildings representingthe main characteristics of Hungarian art in the past anddrawing attention to artefacts that have determinedthe history of Hungarian architecture. Small village churches,town centres, country houses, mansions and castlesfrom different counties and different periods of our historygive some idea of our art monuments. We have not intendedto present only the most representative works and in manycases have chosen almost unknown buildings rarely describedin publications and, in other cases, we present only detailsof more familiar buildings which would require a longervisit to discover in full. Photography provides a goodopportunity to analyse such historic buildings and we havemade full use of it in our illustrations.The selected buildings represent four major styles andperiods: they are the products of Romanesque, Gothic,Renaissance and Baroque art. Although the Mongol Invasionin the mid-13th century destroyed most of our Romanesquebuildings, the 150 years of Turkish rulein the 16th and 17th centuries resulted in the loss of ourheritage from the Middle Ages in the greater partof the country and pratically blocked the full floweringof the Renaissance and although a whole series of wars,up to the catastrophe of the Second World War,took a heavy toll of the legacy of our cultural past,the few surviving reminders of our original art treasureshelp us to recall the beauties of the past.