Cathedral Basilica of Eger

The Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Apostle is one of the largest churches in Hungary, a monumental Neoclassical building constructed between 1831 and 1836. The scale is extraordinary for a provincial city: the two towers are each 54 metres tall, and the main hall can seat several thousand people. The exterior is in a severe, grand style designed to dominate the cityscape; the interior is warmer, with ceiling frescoes, carved wooden choir stalls, and the early nineteenth-century organ.

The basilica faces the Archbishop's Lyceum across Eger's main square, and the two buildings together create an ensemble of Catholic institutional architecture that gives the city much of its character. The cathedral is still an active church and is open for visitors outside service hours.

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A story
The cathedral's architect, János Hild, built it as a deliberate statement of Catholic triumphalism: the Neoclassical facade, with its massive columns and twin towers, was designed to be visible from a great distance across the plain and to announce the reassertion of Christian authority over a city that had been under Ottoman rule for nearly a century. The organ inside, installed in 1838, was the largest in Hungary at the time of its construction.