A small chapel stands in the narrow lane alongside Hradská ulica. Its patron is unknown. It is an interesting small building with a pitched roof. The defining element of its ground floor is the chapel’s entrance, the shied field, in the middle of which there is a small recess to place a holy statue, bordered by a narrow ledge. The chapel’s interior consists of a single room with two empty statue recesses on each side and covered by mitred vaulting. The walls boast decorative murals. A statue of Christ on the Cross, most likely made of wood, has survived until today in the interior. The chapel was built in 1880.
The Abbot of the Pannonhalma Benedictines built a church in honour of St Bartholomew in Dunajská Lužná in the 13th century. In the 17th century, it also served as the parish church during the sectarian struggles of 1684. Due to its size, it was unable to accommodate pilgrims, so Abbot of Pannonhalma, Dániel Somogyi, ordered the construction of a larger church on the site of the Romanesque church, which was then built between 1786 and 1797. The church was consecrated in honour of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in 1797. It is still one of the most important buildings in the village and was listed as a monument in 1963. Comprehensive renovation was carried out between 1982 and 1984. This included replacing the entire roof structure, the main joist, the flooring and part of the plaster-work as well as repainting the entire church. Copper plates were used as roofing material. A new parsonage was built between 1989 and 1990, which has been the seat of the Dunajská Lužná Dominican convent since 1996. The latest comprehensive renovation of the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross has been ongoing since 2004 (rehabilitation of daub walls, window replacement, new electrical wiring, pew replacement, exterior and interior painting, new entrance door, putting the church’s surroundings in order and tidying up the square between the church and the parsonage).
Built in 1783 on the foundations of an earlier church, St Michael’s Church is a single-naved, late Baroque building. We have no exact details about its predecessor’s construction and consecration, but we do know that it was consecrated to the honour of the Archangel St Michael. We can form a picture of the status of the previous church and congregation on the basis of surviving visitation records dating from 1659, 1680, 1696 and 1713. In 1680, Čunovo was a still an arm or a branch of Rusovce, whose parish priest came to dispense the holy sacraments. According to the records, the village landowners asked the bishop for an independent parish with its own priest. Their request was fulfilled in 1689 and Čunovo became a parish in its own right, with its own seal among other things, several imprints of which still survive; the village’s current coat of arms was later modelled on this. The 1696 visitation record preserved the name of the local parish priest, Martin Ignác Horváth, who was then serving his third year in Čunovo. A statue of St John of Nepomuk stands near the former port on the banks of the Danube. This was erected to commemorate the devastating flood that literally washed away half the village on All Saints Day in 1787. Also near the church, but outside the village walls, you will come across a statue of the Virgin Mary. This was erected in the second half of the 18th century by Melchior Kerekes, the sub-prefect of Moson County, who lived in Čunovo and was a generous supporter of the local church. His mansion house stood on the site of today’s local council offices.
The church, located in Bratislava’s old town, was originally built in Gothic style with later reconstructions combining numerous stylistic features into the sacral building complex. It is the oldest ecclesiastical building in the Slovakian capital. It merits attention not only because of its architectural significance but also due to important historical events connected to it.
The parish church at the lower end of the village is one of the oldest surviving buildings in Malacky. It was built by the protestant Balassa family. The single-naved, polygonal sanctuary church was built around 1574. It has been in the hands of the Catholic Church since 1621. The late Renaissance-style tower was added in 1672. The most valuable item among the sacral relics in the interior is the pulpit dating from the second half of the 17th century. The altar’s central, main image depicts the Most Holy Trinity; the painting was done in the middle of the 19th century. The church has two side altars, one is the Lourdes Virgin Mary altar, the second the Heart of Jesus altar. There is a crypt beneath the church.
St Martin’s Cathedral is the largest and most significant three-naved Gothic church in Bratislava. Its construction began in the 13th century, in an old cemetery where there was already a small chapel. It was transformed over the centuries, achieving its current appearance after 1849. The cathedral played an extremely important role during Bratislava’s 200 years as capital of the Kingdom of Hungary (between 1563 and 1830). Eleven monarchs and eight queens were crowned in the Gothic St Martin’s Cathedral during this time, the most famous of which was Maria Theresa.
The church stands next to the Croatian Canal (Chorvátske rameno), a former branch of the Danube, near the Technopol building complex. In 2003, Pope John Paul II celebrated mass here and the square now bears his name. The Catholic Church owns 1.7215 hectares of land, of which 1.2970 hectares proper are in the hands of the parish (comprising the church, the parish offices, the pastoral centre, playgrounds and parking spaces); its built area is 1,108.5m2.
According to the sources, the Holy Spirit Parish Church, built around 1580, is a single-naved Renaissance-style sacral building, with a polygonal masonry presbytery and a massive rectangular tower with supporting walls. The interior’s barrel-vaulting with lunettes is worthy of attention. On the western side, you can see the gallery built at the end of the 19th century, which is closed by Prussian vaulting. The church is built of stone and covered with a tiled roof.
The chapel in the local cemetery was gradually transformed into a Gothic church in the first half of the 14th century. The Gothic church tower built onto the 1.5m-thick double walls is first mentioned in sources from 1306. The church was later rebuilt in Renaissance and Baroque style. Its present state reflects its 1888 transformation, when the parish priest, Móric Alster, extended the church by eight metres to increase its capacity and also increased its height by one metre. On entering the remarkable building, the visitor is first struck by the high altar carved in 1949 from Carrara marble, followed by the five stained-glass windows from 1896 depicting religious themes, the statues, the murals, the Baroque pulpit dating from the early 18th century, the two side altars from 1712 listed as protected monuments and a series of other special, sacred monuments.
The church, constructed between 1270 and 1279, is the borough’s oldest building. It was originally consecrated to the honour of the Virgin Mary and then to St King Ladislaus. From 1968, it was again consecrated in the name of the Virgin Mary and is now Our Lady of Seven Sorrows. The single-naved church ends in a multi-tiered sanctuary whose Gothic quadripartite is decorated with medieval headstones. The church is home to the reliquary containing the relics of the mid-19th-century martyr, blessed Zeman Titus, who was born here.
The village’s inhabitants became acquainted with the doctrines of the Reformation in the 1530s. Due to the adverse fortunes of the Calvinist fellowship, the church’s construction only began in 1825. The church was consecrated ten years later in 1835. The flat-ceilinged church has a wooden-shingled roof. At first, a wooden belfry was built, and a small bell was cast for it in 1816. The ornate tower with its unusual geometrical steeple stands in front of the main facade and is connected to it with a curved Baroque wall. The large, sophisticated geometrical steeple’s timberwork is covered with metal plates. The pulpit was made in 1851. A gallery with an enclosed lower part and rows of pews on a raised floor was built on the western and eastern sides of the nave. The walls and ceiling are covered with pine panelling. The communion table and baptismal table are in the middle of the church while the organ stands on a pedestal.
The Roman Catholic Church was built in Baroque style between 1751 and 1768 and was expanded with a side aisle in 1930. The building’s most characteristic feature is its tower which protrudes at the front. The carved pulpit was made in the 1770s. The Baroque high altar’s oil painting features the church’s patron saint, St John of Nepomuk, standing on the clouds and being raised to the heavens. There is an angel at his feet holding a crucifix in his hand, surrounded by cherubs. The high altar’s painting underwent repairs in 1881. The church’s facade and the memorial to World War I on the church’s elevation were also renovated in 2015. The church is a listed building.
There were already crosses standing on the Calvaria Hill above the Roman Catholic Holy Trinity Church at the beginning of the 1800s; these had rotted over time. The new crosses were made by a local carpenter and his sons. The bodies on the cross were painted by Táp handyman, Tibor Hatos. A “serpentine” pedestrian path was built and reliefs immortalising the 14 stations of Jesus’s Way of the Cross were erected next to it. Wood-carver Károly Schreiner created the station’s images. Thanks to the cooperation of the local populace, the Catholics and the Calvinists erected the crosses and put in plants. The ceremonial benediction of the Táp Calvaria Hill took place on 28 March 2015. When you arrive up at the crosses, you will see a lovely panorama of visitors and pilgrims spread out before you.
The Calvinist congregation in Táp ran a school from 1629. At that time, except for Pápa, there was only this one school in the whole diocese. The Turkish army retreating from Vienna destroyed the village and the church in 1683, but it had already been rebuilt by 1691. In 1700, the Jesuits seized the church and banished the preacher, János Újvári. Freedom of religious profession in Táp was interrupted until 1784. At that time, worshippers went to Réde to attend Reformed services. The Reformed congregation of Táp began to build the current church in September 1784. They had to fill in the marshy land with hundreds of cartloads of soil. The church was inaugurated on 4 December 1785. The tower was built in 1827. Commemorative plaques were installed by the congregation in the church on the 400th and 500th anniversaries of the beginning of the Reformation (in 1917 and 2017).
The church, a listed building, is fundamentally very old, it was already standing in the 14th century. The current form of the Baroque building dates from 1764. Statues of St Stephen and St Emeric stand beside the Baroque high altar’s picture depicting the Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). The pulpit and side altar are also very valuable. The church’s frescoes were restored in 1933 by Antal Borsa and then again in 1993 by Zoltán Závory. The Bethlehem scene can be seen above the choir, the ceiling depicts the baptism of Jesus in Jordan whereas the Ascension can be seen on the sanctuary vaulting. The Way of the Cross begins in the churchyard from the statue of Mary and leads up to the Calvary Hill.
There are many public works in the village, but mention should be made of the Holy Trinity, St Wendel, St Nicholas, St Stephen, St Elisabeth and St Florian statues. There are stone crosses on the roads leading to the village and near the two churches. Statues of St John of Nepomuk and St Barbara stand on the Szil church’s high gable on both sides of the tower. There is a scene from after the Easter Resurrection above the church’s main entrance and a relief depicting the builder of the church, parish priest, Vince Csigi, beside the gate. There is a statue of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus sitting on her arm in the churchyard. The chapel on the upper floor of the former school, used by the nuns serving there and teaching the girls during the first half of the 20th century, has been restored. An exhibition entitled “Sacrality” can be found in the neighbouring rooms.
According to the 1696-97 church visit records, “in this small village, which is part of the Szil parish, there is a small bell hanging in a little belfry”. Kistata’s small 75 m2 church was built in 1836. The protagonists on the altarpiece is the young St Anne with the new-born Mary in her arms. Next to them are the midwives, with a ribbon saying, “The holy Virgin’s name is Mary”. The men standing in the background are looking through the window in curiosity. One of them is obviously the father, St Joachim. The inhabitants of the open heavens are watching the event from above. One of the colourful panel paintings on the side panels of the simple pulpit is St Peter holding keys, another shows St Paul with his sword. The third image on the pulpit depicts the symbols of the three divine virtues (faith, hope and love) – the cross, the anchor and the flaming heart. Zoltán Závory’s painted ceiling shows the symbols of the Holy Spirit and the Eucharist.
King St Stephen donated the “income from the fairs or markets usually held in Szil” to the Bakonybél Abbey in 1037. At first, the worshippers attending the church consecrated in honour of St Wenceslas paid the tithe to the Premonstratensian provost in Csorna. Szil, a country town from the end of the 1400s, was one of the Kanizsay, Nádasdy and the Esterházy family’s most populous settlements. The demolition of the old All Saints’ Church and the construction of the new church took place under the guidance of the parish priest, Vince Csigi, over seven months in 1890. The monumentally sized, neo-Romanesque church designed by József Ullein was consecrated on 12 October 1890 by Bishop János Zalka. The statue of Jesus on the high altar was made by Károly Hild, a stonemason from Sopron. The gospel scenes on the side walls and the chancel arch were painted by József Samodai in 1964. The “Grove Mary” statue, found in 1777 in the neighbouring village of Kistata in the reedy grove next to the Linkó stream, stands in a columnal, canopied cabinet on the pillar opposite the pulpit. The picture of St Mary of Goretti at the entrance was painted by Masa Feszty.
Canon Mihály Wagnor, arriving to consecrate the church on 25 June 1939, was welcomed at the edge of the village by a procession of horse riders and a group of cyclists. The canon’s response to this welcome was to stress that “this small church means as much in local terms as a cathedral in the city rising to the sky”. The church was built according to the plans of Vince Schiel from Győr. There is an old stone cross on one side of its facade and a missionary wooden cross on the other while a statue of St Stephen the King stands above the entrance. Inside, there are paintings from unknown artists on the side wall of the nave: from the left, a copy of the painting of the Weeping Virgin Mary from Győr, from the right an unusual representation of St Joseph. The picture, which arrived in Sobor in 1968, depicts the young Jesus looking at his foster-father with eyes wide open as he is carrying him securely with his worker’s hands while between them there is a small crucifix, as a prevision of Jesus’s cross. The altarpiece depicting the triumph of St Michael over Satan is a marvellous copy of Hubert Maurer’s painting.
The village already had an Evangelical parent congregation in 1612. The congregation is currently a filial church belonging to Rábaszentandrás.The church was built in 1927. The timberwork of its furnishings (altar, pulpit, baptismal font and organ) is uniform in colour. The altarpiece shows Jesus praying on the night of Maundy Thursday. The same scene is depicted on a small wall tile image too, in which the sleeping disciples are lying down, as a side image, unable to keep vigil with their master in the background. The church’s organ was made in the workshop of Sándor Ménesi in Szombathely. The choir’s gallery is supported by cast-iron pillars.