Ráckeresztúr is a village in

Fejér County Fejér (, ) is an administrative county in central Hungary. It lies on the west bank of the river Danube and nearly touches the eastern shore of Lake Balaton. It shares borders with the Hungarian counties Veszprém, Komárom-Esztergom County ...

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 ...

. It is situated in the Martonvásár District of Fejér County, about 30 km south-west of

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

on the broad

alluvial plain An alluvial plain is a plain (an essentially flat landform) created by the deposition of sediment over a long period by one or more rivers coming from highland regions, from which alluvial soil forms. A ''floodplain'' is part of the process, bei ...

between the

Vértes Hills Vértes is a mountain range in north-western Hungary, in the Central Transdanubian region, between the ranges Bakony and Gerecse. The Vértes Mountains are part of the Transdanubian Mountains. Geography The area of the Vértes occupies . It is ab ...

and the

Danube The Danube ( ; see also #Names and etymology, other names) is the List of rivers of Europe#Longest rivers, second-longest river in Europe, after the Volga in Russia. It flows through Central and Southeastern Europe, from the Black Forest sou ...

. The settlement occupies 35.3 km² and had 3,581 inhabitants at the 2022

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 ...

, giving a population density just above 100 per square kilometre. It lies on the left bank of the Szent László-patak, a minor stream draining the

mezzanine A mezzanine (; or in Italian, a ''mezzanino'') is an intermediate floor in a building which is partly open to the double-height ceilinged floor below, or which does not extend over the whole floorspace of the building, a loft with non-sloped ...

between

Lake Velence Lake Velence ( ; ), an endorheic basin, is the third largest natural lake in Hungary. It is a popular holiday destination among Hungarians. The lake has an area of 26 km2, one third of which is covered by Phragmites, the common reed. Because ...

and the Danube, and functions today as a commuter village with direct road links to the M7 motorway and suburban rail connections through nearby Martonvásár. The first extant written reference to the locality—then simply "Keresztúr"—occurs in a 1347 boundary charter issued during the reign of

Louis I Louis I may refer to: Cardinals * Louis I, Cardinal of Guise (1527–1578) Counts * Ludwig I, Count of Württemberg (c. 1098–1158) * Louis I of Blois (1172–1205) * Louis I of Flanders (1304–1346) * Louis I of Châtillon (died 13 ...

, while

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

surface finds point to earlier Avar,

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language *Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Foot ...

and

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

activity. The

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the word to which it is affixed. Prefixes, like other affixes, can b ...

rác-, denoting Southern-Slav (Serb) settlers, became attached after Orthodox farmers repopulated the area circa 1629 following the long

Turkish wars A series of military conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and various European states took place from the Late Middle Ages up through the early 20th century. The earliest conflicts began during the Byzantine–Ottoman wars, waged in Anatolia in ...

. Baron Anselm Fleissemann purchased the estate in 1717 and soon financed a single-

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

Baroque church dedicated to the

Exaltation of the Holy Cross The Feast of the Holy Cross, or Feast of the Cross, commemorates the cross used in the crucifixion of Jesus. In the Christian liturgical calendar, there are several different celebrations which honor and celebrate the cross used in the crucifi ...

; construction stretched from the 1720s to its

vaulting In architecture, a vault (French ''voûte'', from Italian ''volta'') is a self-supporting arched form, usually of stone or brick, serving to cover a space with a ceiling or roof. As in building an arch, a temporary support is needed while ring ...

in 1769, and the tower was repeatedly rebuilt after fire and storm damage. Eighteenth-century tax rolls already list over ninety peasant houses and a handful of craftsmen; by 1830 the population had passed 1,300, rising steadily with new house-plots laid out on former

pasture Pasture (from the Latin ''pastus'', past participle of ''pascere'', "to feed") is land used for grazing. Types of pasture Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of farmland, grazed by domesticated livestock, such as horses, c ...

Viticulture Viticulture (, "vine-growing"), viniculture (, "wine-growing"), or winegrowing is the cultivation and harvesting of grapes. It is a branch of the science of horticulture. While the native territory of ''Vitis vinifera'', the common grape vine ...

has long underpinned the local economy: the village forms the south-eastern spur of the Etyek–Buda wine district, whose chalky

loess A loess (, ; from ) is a clastic rock, clastic, predominantly silt-sized sediment that is formed by the accumulation of wind-blown dust. Ten percent of Earth's land area is covered by loesses or similar deposition (geology), deposits. A loess ...

over

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

favours high-acid white varieties such as

Chardonnay Chardonnay (, ; ) is a green-skinned grape variety used in the production of white wine. The variety originated in the Burgundy wine region of eastern France, but is now grown wherever wine is produced, from England to New Zealand. For new a ...

, Irsai Olivér and

Sauvignon Blanc Sauvignon blanc () is a green-skinned grape variety that originates from the city of Bordeaux in France. The grape most likely gets its name from the French words ''sauvage'' ("wild") and ''blanc'' ("white") due to its early origins as an ind ...

. Mixed farming—principally

maize Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native American ...

, sunflower and livestock—remains typical across the loess plains of the Mezőföld, where

cereal A cereal is a grass cultivated for its edible grain. Cereals are the world's largest crops, and are therefore staple foods. They include rice, wheat, rye, oats, barley, millet, and maize ( Corn). Edible grains from other plant families, ...

s and

oilseed Vegetable oils, or vegetable fats, are oils extracted from seeds or from other parts of edible plants. Like animal fats, vegetable fats are ''mixtures'' of triglycerides. Soybean oil, grape seed oil, and cocoa butter are examples of seed ...

s still covered about 70 percent of the arable land in 2013 and Fejér County hosted some of Hungary's largest cattle operations. A growing share of residents now commute to service-sector jobs in Budapest: the 2011 census showed that more than 15 percent of Ráckeresztúr's labour force travelled to the capital, placing the village firmly inside the Budapest agglomeration. The municipal heritage register lists a free-standing late-Baroque Trinity column (1779) on the Szentlászló heath, First- and Second-World-War memorials in the Hősök park, and two nineteenth-century manor houses: the classically fronted Ivánkay residence, built for the Szüts–Ivánkay family in the 1820s, and the nearby Pázmándy–Petheő mansion, later remodelled by the Brauch family and set in an eight-hectare landscaped park.

References

External links

Street map
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rackeresztur Populated places in Fejér County