Szombathely, about 50km (31mi.) as the crow flies south of Sopron on the eastern edge of the Alps, is the second largest economic and cultural center in West Transdanubia. This busy industrial town (agricultural machinery, precision engineering, shoes, textiles) is the administrative seat of the Vas
region with a teacher training college and a renowned art gallery; the Savaria festivals take place in summer. Only a few buildings remain of the Late Baroque town, as much of Szombathely was destroyed in the Second World War.
History
Since the Stone Age the town was situated on important trade routes; the Bernstein road linking Italy with the Baltic ran past here. The Romans founded the "Colonia Claudia Savaria" in 43 BC, in 107 it was the capital of the province of Pannonia Superior; in 193 L. Septimius Severus was elected emperor. No less a person than St Martin was born in Savaria in 316. By the 5th C the population of the town had grown to 30,000, but in 455 an earthquake had such devastating consequences that the name of Savaria did not appear again for centuries. Under Charles the Great the town came under Frankish rule; its German name Steinamanger stems from this time, which probably referred to its abandoned state. From the 13th C Szombathely belonged to the bishops of Gyor. In 1777 Maria Theresia was responsible for the town becoming the seat of a bishop and undergoing an economic and cultural revival. The first bishop of Szombathely, János Szily, had Szombathely rebuilt and expanded into a residential town. Following the Second World War the town recovered quickly.
In the 1970s, many factories were built in Szombathely. While the 1980s saw the building of a County Library, public indoor swimming pools, and a gallery. The main square in Szombathely was refurbished in 2006 through EU funding.
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