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travel
Tourists can get their fill of history, art, marzipan
Serious art and souvenirs mingle in Szentendre John Masters
Contributing writer
SZENTENDRE, Hungary— This is the sort of charming small town that, even though you quickly see that you’re far from the first to find it, is still a pleasure to discover. The fact that it’s just 20 kilometres from Budapest and has at least four trains an hour arriving at it from the capital explains both why it’s so busy and why, if you’re already in Budapest, you’d have to be very lazy indeed to miss it. Szentendre (St. Andrew) became an art colony in the 1920s and 30s. The painters, sculptors and ceramicists who came moved into a town built largely in the 18th century and filled with baroque art and architecture. Its streets were narrow and twisting and the Danube flowed smoothly past in a nicely drawn curve. All that is still true today. From the train station it’s
a 15-minute walk north, crossing Bukkos Stream, to the centre of town. As soon as you’re over the bridge you’re in the most delightful, and touristed, part of Szendentre. Restaurant patios stand next to crafts shops, broken by the occasional museum dedicated to local art, history or marzipan. In the town square stands a cross that was erected as thanks for Szendentre having escaped the Black Plague in 1763. In the square’s northeast corner is the Orthodox Church of the Annunciation (Blagovestenska Church), one of several houses of worship for the area’s Serbian population, which arrived in waves, beginning in the 14th century as the advancing Turks pushed them out. The church exterior is plain, but the inside is baroque and rococo with a distinctly eastern flavour. From the square, setting out in any direction is re-
warding. Continue north and you’re on the longest stretch of crafts and souvenir stalls selling everything from pricey Herend ceramics to wooden slingshots, all giving the street a colourful demeanour. To the west is another burst of galleries and restaurants. If you slip between the shops at number 8 and 9 on the square you can climb a narrow staircase to the terrace of the parish church of St. John, which may give you a respite from the busyness below as well as providing views of the town and glimpses of the Danube. To the east is the Danube itself, another place to enjoy a bit of tranquility. A gravel path leads along the riverbank, with benches where locals read the paper and young couples hold hands. For the serious art lover there are dozens of galleries to explore. One of the best is the Erdesz Galeria just off the main square. It sells
Szentendre (St. Andrew) is the type of charming, baroque town too pretty not to have been discovered by tourists, but too good to pass up. photo John Masters works by a number of wellknown Hungarian artists, including Lajos Vajda (19081941), whose combining of cubism and surrealism with folk motifs spawned a school. A Vajda can cost about $18,000 but, according to Budapest-based guide
Andrea Wurmb, in Szentendre you can bargain for just about anything except Herend ceramics. “Don’t expect to get 50 per cent off,” she says, “but you might get 10 or 15 per cent, especially if you say up front that you’re paying cash.”
If you go: For information on travel in Hungary, visit the Hungarian National Tourist Office website at www.gotohungary.com. John Masters is a member of the Meridian Writers’ Group.
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