Bakonybél is a village in

Veszprém county Veszprém ( hu, Veszprém megye, ; german: Komitat Wesprim (Weißbrunn)) is an administrative county (''megye'') in Hungary. Veszprém is also the name of the capital city of Veszprém county. Veszprém county Veszprém county lies in western ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the 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 a ...

, in

Zirc District Zirc ( hu, Zirci járás) is a district in north-eastern part of Veszprém County. ''Zirc'' is also the name of the town where the district seat is found. The district is located in the Central Transdanubia Statistical Region. Geography Zirc D ...

. A tourist destination with a number of sights and activities, the village is located in a basin surrounded by nearby mountains.

History

The history of the village is closely connected to the

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Bakonybél Abbey The Bakonybél Abbey is a Benedictine monastery established at Bakonybél in the Kingdom of Hungary in the first decades of the 11th century. Its patron is Saint Maurice. Foundation (c. 1018–1038) The establishment of the monastery is conn ...

founded by

Saint Stephen I Pope Stephen I ( la, Stephanus I) was the bishop of Rome from 12 May 254 to his death on 2 August 257.Mann, Horace (1912). "Pope St. Stephen I" in ''The Catholic Encyclopedia''. Vol. 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company. He was later Canonizati ...

in 1018. Saint Gellert resided here as a hermit between 1023 and 1030. The village had been completely destroyed during the Ottoman occupation and was later rebuilt and repopulated with Slovaks and Germans.

The Jewish community

In the 19th and 20th centuries, a small Jewish community lived in the village, in

1880 Events January–March * January 22 – Toowong State School is founded in Queensland, Australia. * January – The international White slave trade affair scandal in Brussels is exposed and attracts international infamy. * February � ...

23 Jews lived in the village, most of whom were murdered in the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

. The community had a Jewish cemetery.Badacsonytomajs Jewish cemetery
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Main sights

The

Benedictine , image = Medalla San Benito.PNG , caption = Design on the obverse side of the Saint Benedict Medal , abbreviation = OSB , formation = , motto = (English: 'Pray and Work') , foun ...

church and monastery were built in 1754 in

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

style. There is also a chapel close to the village with the statue of Saint Gellert, the stations of Christ's sufferings and the holy trinity, at Ivy Spring (also known as Saint Spring), next to a lake supplied by the spring. Another sight is the Ethnographic Museum in the village. There is also a museum of nature and forestry called the House of the Bakony Forests. Another attraction is a 19th-century American ranch, not very far from the village, with horse-related activities. There are also multiple routes for trips in the nearby forests and hills, offering scenery, caves and a lookout tower on the highest peak of the Bakony Mountains.

Facilities

There is a three star hotel and several guest houses in the village. There are also restaurants and pubs. A number of small grocery stores and also separate greengrocers are available.
There is a community house providing tourist information, a doctor's office, and catering. The village has its own post office, pharmacy, day nursery, primary school and library with Internet access.

References

External links