Šurany (until 1927, ''Veľké Šurany'') is a town and a railroad hub in the

Nové Zámky District Nové Zámky District (''okres Nové Zámky'') is a district in the Nitra Region of western Slovakia. Until 1918, the area of the district was split between several counties of the Kingdom of Hungary: the largest area in the north formed part o ...

Nitra Region The Nitra Region (, ; ) is one of the administrative regions of Slovakia. It was first established in 1923 and from 1996 exists in its present borders. It consists of seven districts () and 354 municipalities, from which 16 have a town status. T ...

, southern

Slovakia Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's m ...

. Alongside the main settlement, it has the boroughs of Kostolný Sek and Nitriansky Hrádok, both annexed 1976.

Etymology

The town name comes from Slavic ''šur-'', ''šurý'' (curved, in a wider sense hilly) + the suffix ''-any'' referring to people. Šurany: "people from hills", the opposite of Rovňany: "people from plains".

History

Archaeological discoveries show that the site of the present-day town was inhabited in the

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

. The town was first mentioned under name ''villa Suran'' in a document of Hungarian king Béla II in 1138. There was a castle existing since the second half of the 15th century. Between 1568 and 1581, the town was the seat of the Captaincy of Lower Hungary. The settlement was occupied by the Turks in 1663–84. The castle was torn down in 1725. In 1832 the town was made a royal town with market rights. A sugar factory was established in 1854 (closed in 2000).:: Vítajte na stránkach mesta Šurany ::. .:: www.surany.sk ::
/ref> Before the establishment of independent

Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...

in 1918, Šurany was part of

Nyitra County Nyitra County (; ; ; ) was an administrative county ( comitatus) of the Kingdom of Hungary. Its territory lay in what is now western Slovakia. Geography Nyitra County shared borders with the Austrian land Moravia and Trencsén County, Turó ...

within the

Kingdom of Hungary The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from 1000 to 1946 and was a key part of the Habsburg monarchy from 1526-1918. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the Coro ...

. From 1938 to 1945, it was again part of

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

as a consequence of the

First Vienna Award The First Vienna Award was a treaty signed on 2 November 1938 pursuant to the Vienna Arbitration, which took place at Vienna's Belvedere Palace. The arbitration and award were direct consequences of the previous month's Munich Agreement, whic ...

. On 29 March 1945, the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

entered Šurany and it once again belonged to Czechoslovakia.

Geography

Šurany lies at an altitude of

above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of a location's vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) in reference to a vertical datum based on a historic mean sea level. In geodesy, it is formalized as orthometric height. The zero level ...

and covers an area of . It is located in the Danubian Lowland near the Nitra River, away from

Nové Zámky Nové Zámky (; ) is a town in Nové Zámky District in the Nitra Region of southwestern Slovakia. Geography The town is located on the Danubian Lowland, on the Nitra River, at an altitude of 119 metres. It is located around 100 km fr ...

and around from

Bratislava Bratislava (German: ''Pressburg'', Hungarian: ''Pozsony'') is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Slovakia, Slovak Republic and the fourth largest of all List of cities and towns on the river Danube, cities on the river Danube. ...

Climate

Demographics

According to the 2001

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

, the town had 10,491 inhabitants. 97.28% of inhabitants were

Slovaks The Slovaks ( (historical Sloveni ), singular: ''Slovák'' (historical: ''Sloven'' ), feminine: ''Slovenka'' , plural: ''Slovenky'') are a West Slavic ethnic group and nation native to Slovakia who share a common ancestry, culture, history ...

, 1.12%

Hungarians Hungarians, also known as Magyars, are an Ethnicity, ethnic group native to Hungary (), who share a common Culture of Hungary, culture, Hungarian language, language and History of Hungary, history. They also have a notable presence in former pa ...

, 0.64%

Czechs The Czechs (, ; singular Czech, masculine: ''Čech'' , singular feminine: ''Češka'' ), or the Czech people (), are a West Slavs, West Slavic ethnic group and a nation native to the Czech Republic in Central Europe, who share a common Bohemia ...

. The religious make-up was 80.02%

Roman Catholics The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

, 14.76% people with no religious affiliation, and 1.19%

Lutherans Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched the Reformation in 15 ...

People

Šurany featured in a 2006 episode of '' Who Do You Think You Are?'' featuring

Stephen Fry Sir Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director, narrator and writer. He came to prominence as a member of the comic act Fry and Laurie alongside Hugh Laurie, with the two starring in ''A Bit of ...

. Fry was tracing his Jewish ancestry in the town, where his maternal grandfather Martin Neumann was a manager at the Šurany sugar factory and was recruited to work in the burgeoning sugar industry in

Bury St Edmunds Bury St Edmunds (), commonly referred to locally as ''Bury,'' is a cathedral as well as market town and civil parish in the West Suffolk District, West Suffolk district, in the county of Suffolk, England.OS Explorer map 211: Bury St. Edmunds an ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. Neumann and his wife Rosa Braun Neumann immigrated to Bury in 1926.

References

External links

* (Slovak, only History is in English as well)
Šurany – Nové Zámky okolie
{{DEFAULTSORT:Surany Cities and towns in Slovakia First Vienna Award