Kittsee

Kittsee is an Austrian municipality in the district of Neusiedl am See in Burgenland, on the border with Slovakia. Its Slovak name is Kopčany, its Hungarian name Köpcsény and its Croatian name Gijeca. The settlement lay in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, was probably settled by Pecheneg border guards in the 11th century, and is first documented in 1291. Because it guards the point where the Danube enters Hungary it played a part in the defence of the kingdom, and it was destroyed by Ottoman armies in 1529 and 1683. The Esterházy family took it over in 1676 and the Batthyány-Strattmann family were the main landlords from 1880. Like the rest of Burgenland it belonged to Hungary until 1920 or 1921 and has been part of the state of Burgenland since 1921. Today the municipality hosts the only hospital of its district, founded by the ophthalmologist Prince Ladislaus Batthyány-Strattmann, and Schloss Kittsee, built in 1668, has housed an ethnographic museum since 1974. The violinist and composer Joseph Joachim was born here in 1831.