Twelve Hungarian Towns from the Austrian Border to the Northern Great Plain, West to East

Mosonmagyaróvár stands near the Austrian and Slovak borders in northwestern Hungary. It was formed in 1939 by merging Magyaróvár and Moson, and a Roman fortress called Ad Flexum stood on the site as early as the first century. Today it draws an estimated 160,000 Austrian patients a year to roughly 350 dentists.

Tét lies in the Little Hungarian Plain between Pápa and Győr and is the seat of Tét District. In 1910 it was a village of 4,111 people including 432 Jewish residents, whose community was later deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and it received official town status only in 2001.

Zirc is the administrative seat of Zirc District in Veszprém County, with 6,552 residents in 2023. The Hungarian Wikipedia article records its first written mention in 1199, as Siric, and the town is home to a Cistercian Abbey, the Bakony Museum of Natural Sciences and an arboretum.

Bóly in Baranya County was home to a large Danube Swabian community whose ancestors came from the German district of Fulda in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Most were expelled between 1945 and 1948, and the town today is made up largely of Hungarians who arrived through population exchanges with Czechoslovakia. Its first written record dates from 1093.

Százhalombatta means one hundred tumuli, after ancient burial mounds at the edge of the town. People have lived here since the Neolithic, and its Bronze Age tell settlement, Százhalombatta-Földvár, has archaeological layers up to six meters deep. The name Batta first appears in a charter in 1318.

Baja is a city with county rights in Bács-Kiskun County, with about 33,000 residents, the second largest in its county after Kecskemét. It was likely established in the 14th century, received town rights in 1696 and became a regional center under Ottoman rule, and it sits where the Great Hungarian Plain meets Transdanubia across the Danube.

Szentendre lies between Budapest and the Pilis-Visegrád Mountains. It was depopulated during the Ottoman period and resettled by Serb and other migrants whose influence shaped its baroque architecture. It gained city status in 1872 and a rail link to Budapest in 1888, and has been an artists colony since the early twentieth century.

Eger is the county seat of Heves County and the second largest city in Northern Hungary after Miskolc. It is known for its medieval castle, thermal baths, baroque buildings, the northernmost Ottoman minaret and its red wines, and it sits on the Eger Stream between the Mátra and Bükk mountains.

Kazincbarcika was created after the Second World War by merging the villages of Sajókazinc and Barcika as part of socialist-era industrialization. It gained town status in 1954 with about 11,000 residents and grew to 30,000 by the 1970s around the BorsodChem chemical factory founded in 1949, in the Sajó valley 24 kilometers from Miskolc.

Szerencs is called the Gate of Hegyalja. In 1605 the Hungarian parliament met here on the estate of István Bocskai, who was elected governor of Transylvania, and in 1606 he granted the town royal privileges. In 1889 it gained what was then the largest sugar factory and refinery in Europe.

Hajdúszoboszló became a major thermal spa town after a hot spring was found during oil drilling on October 26, 1925. It is the third largest town in Hajdú-Bihar County, about 19 kilometers southwest of Debrecen, and its first written mention dates to 1075.

Nyíregyháza is the capital of Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County and the seventh largest city in Hungary, with roughly 118,000 residents in 2017. It was first documented around 1209 as Nyír, became a market town in 1786 and the county seat in 1876, and its zoo holds over 500 species.