Trnava
Template:Infobox Slovak town Trnava (Hungarian: Nagyszombat, German: Tyrnau) is a town in western Slovakia, 45 km to the northeast of Bratislava, on the Trnávka river, and at the main Bratislava-Žilina railway and Bratislava-Žilina limited-access highway. It is the capital of a region (kraj), a Higher Territorial Unit (VÚC) and the biggest town of the district (okres). It was the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishopric (1541-1820 and then again since 1978). The town has an historic center. Because of the many churches within its town walls, Trnava has often been called "parva Roma" , i. e. "Little Rome", or more recently, the "Slovak Rome."
Name
The name of the town is derived from the Slovak word tŕnie (=thornbush) which characterized the river banks in the region. The Hungarian name (first mentioned in 1238 in the form of Zumbotel) originates from the Hungarian word szombat (=Saturday) referring to the weekly market fairs held on Saturdays.
History
Permanent settlements on the town's territory are known from the Neolithic period onwards. During the Middle Ages, an important market settlement arose here at the junction of two important roads- from Bohemia to Hungary and from the Mediterranean to Poland.
The first written reference to Trnava dates from 1211. In 1238, Trnava was the first town in Slovakia to be granted a town charter (civic privileges) by the king. The former agricultural center gradually became a center of manufacture, trade, and crafts. By the early 13th century, the king of Hungary had invited numerous Germans to settle in Trnava; this settlement increased after the Tatar invasion in 1242. At the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, a part of Trnava was enclosed by a very long town wall. The original Slovak market settlement and the Germans, however, stayed behind this wall.
The town was also the place of many important negotiations: Charles I, the king of Hungary, signed here a currency agreement with the Czech King John of Luxemburg in 1327, and King Louis I (who often stayed in the town and died there in 1380) signed here a friendship agreement with Emperor Charles IV in 1360.
The temporary German majority in the town's population ceased in favour of the Slovaks during the campaigns undertaken by the Czech Hussites in the 15th century, who opposed Germans and made Trnava the center of the campaigns in southwestern Slovakia from 1432 to 1435. The town, along with the rest of the territory of present-day Slovakia, gained importance after the conquest of most of what is today Hungary by the Ottoman Empire in 1541, when Trnava became the see (1541 – 1820) of the Archbishopric of Esztergom (before 1541 and after 1820 the see was the town of Esztergom, which was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1543). The cathedrals of the archbishopric were the Saint John the Baptist Cathedral and the Saint Nicholas Cathedral in the town. Many ethnic Hungarians fleeing from the Turks moved to the town after 1541 from present-day Hungary.
In the 16th and especially the 17th century, Trnava was an important center of the Counter-Reformation in the Kingdom of Hungary (at the time largely identical with the territory of present-day Slovakia and a strip of western Hungary). The Archbishop Nicolas Oláh invited the Jesuits to Trnava in 1561 in order to develop the municipal school system. Subsequently, he had a seminary opened in 1566 and in 1577 Trnava’s priest Nicolas Telegdi founded a book-printing house in the town. The first Catholic Bible translation into Hungarian (based on the Latin Vulgata) was also completed in the town by the Jesuit György Káldi who was born there in 1573.
The Jesuit Trnava University (1635-1777), the only university of the Kingdom of Hungary at that time, was founded by Archbishop Péter Pázmány. Originally founded to support the Counter-Reformation, it soon became a center of Slovak education and literature, since most of the teachers, one half of the students and the majority of the town’s inhabitants were Slovaks. Pázmány himself was instrumental in promoting the usage of the Slovak instead of the Czech language and had his work "Isteni igazságra vezető kalauz" [Guide to the Truth of God] and several of his sermons into the local vernacular. From the late 18th century Trnava became a center of the literary and artistic Slovak National Revival. The first standard codification of the Slovak language (by the priest Anton Bernolák in 1787) was based on the Slovak dialect used in the region of Trnava.
The 17th century was also characterized by many anti-Habsburg uprisings in the country – these revolts of Stephen Bocskai, Gabriel Bethlen, George I Rákóczi, and Imre Thököly negatively affected Trnava’s life.
Until World War II, Trnava was also home to a sizable Jewish minority. Their freedom to move was restricted as early as in 1495 and from 1539-1800, and 12 Jews were burned publicly in 1870 during a pogrom.
The importance of the town decreased in the early 19th century, when the university was moved to Buda (today: Eötvös Loránd University) and the see of the archbishopric moved back to Esztergom. It increased however partly again after 1844, when Trnava was connected with Bratislava through the first railway line in the Kingdom of Hungary, which was a horse railway (steam engines were used since 1872). The railway connection launched a modernization of the town, which started with the erection of a big sugar factory, a malt-house and of the Coburgh’s factory (later referred to as the Trnavské automobilové závody [Trnava Car Factory]). The St. Adalbert Association (Spolok sv. Vojtecha), founded in 1870 when the Slovak Foundation (Matica slovenská) was prohibited by the Hungarian authorities, kept up the Slovak national conscience at a time of strong Magyarisation in Hungary. In the 19th but mainly in the early 20th century the town grew behind its town wall and most of the town wall was demolished in the 19th century.
After the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, the town was one of the most industrialized towns of Slovakia. In 1978, by a decision of Pope Paul VI, Trnava became the see of a separate Slovak archbishopric. With the establishment of this archbishopric, Slovakia became independent on Hungary again also in terms of church administration for the first time in centuries.
After the establishment of Slovakia (1993), Trnava became the capital of the newly created Trnavský kraj (region) in 1996. The French car manufacturer PSA began construction of a large automobile plant in Trnava in 2003.
Historic Buildings
As early as in the Middle Ages, Trnava was a significant center of Gothic sacral as well as profane architecture. The St. Nicolas’ Church, St. Helen’s Church and the church monastery complexes (Clarist’s, Franciscan and Dominican) were built in this period.
The Renaissance (16th century) added a town tower to Trnava’s silhouette. Nicolas Oláh ordered the erection of the Seminary and Archbishop’s Palace. Peter Bornemisza and Huszár Gál, the leading personalities of the reformation in the Kingdom of Hungary, were active in Trnava for a short time. The town ramparts were rebuilt to a Renaissance fortification as a reaction to the approaching Turkish danger from the south.
The 17th century was characterized by the construction of the Pualinian Church that bears badges of Silesian Renaissance. The town was gradually redesigned to Baroque. The erection of the St. John of Baptist Church and of the university campus launched a building rush that continued with the reconstruction of the Franciscan and Clarist’s complexes. Builders and artists called to build the university also participated in improvements of the burgher architecture. The Holy Trinity Statue and the group of statues of St. Joseph, the Ursulinian and Trinitarian Church and Monastery are of recent construction.
The District hospital was built 1824. The building of the theatre started in May 1831 and the first performance was played at Christmas. Both of the Trnava synagogues, historizing structures with oriental motifs, date back to the 19th century.
Population
Trnava has 68 292 inhabitants with an average age of 37.3 y [2005 census], out of which:
- Nationality: Slovaks 98.5 %, Czechs 0.7 %, Hungarians 0.3 %
- Age: Pre-productive Age: 9 947, Productive Age: 46 742, Post-productive Age: 11 603
Sister Cities & Twin Cities
Trnava has one official sister city as designated by Sister Cities International:
External links
- Template:Sk icon Trnava Official website
- Trnava travel guide
- Template:Sk icon Trnava University
- Template:Sk icon University of St. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava
