Lying 245km (152mi.) east of Budapest, the agricultural and industrial town of Nyíregyháza is the center of the Nyírség district and the capital of the most easterly region of Hungary. It lies in the midst of one of the country's largest fruit-growing areas, famous for its "Jonathan" apples. Twenty percent of the population of this sprawling town live in detached farmsteads; widespread rural areas around the outside of the town contrast with the urban appearance of its center. Nyíregyháza is also an educational and cultural center with three colleges.
The first documentary record of a settlement here is dated 1215; from the 14th to the 16th C, the town was owned by the influential Báthori family. In 1605 ownership passed to the Transylvanian Prince István Bocskai (1557-1606), who arranged for Haiduks to settle here as he did in the countryside around Debrecen. In the 18th C, Slovak families moved into the almost deserted town.
The building of the rail link with Budapest in the second half of the 19th C provided the impetus required to enable Nyíregyháza to develop into a major commercial center.
Sights
The center of Nyíregyháza lacks any buildings of outstanding historical merit and derives its character mainly from such edifices as the regional offices, the theater and others all designed by the architect Ignác Aplár. Of interest to the visitor is the Jósa András Museum at Benczúr Gyula tér 21, with some absorbing finds from the time of the Magyar invasion, a department dealing with local history and ethnographic subjects, as well as a permanent exhibition of work by the Nyíregyháza artist Gyula Benczúr (1844-1920). On the square in front of the museum stands a monument to him as well as the sculpture "Birth of Venus" by Zsigmond Kisfaludy Stróbl.
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