Helvécia is a village in
Bács-Kiskun county, in the
Southern Great Plain
The Southern Great Plain ( ) is a statistical ( NUTS 2) region of Hungary. It is part of Great Plain and North (NUTS 1) region. The Southern Great Plain includes the counties of Bács-Kiskun, Békés, and Csongrád-Csanád. The region is in the ...
region of southern
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 ...
.
History
Helvécia was founded in 1892 by Swiss-born teacher .
After the great
phylloxera
Grape phylloxera is an insect pest of grapevines worldwide, originally native to eastern North America. Grape phylloxera (''Daktulosphaira vitifoliae'' (Fitch 1855) belongs to the family Phylloxeridae, within the order Hemiptera, bugs); orig ...
epidemic that had destroyed much of the historical vineyard plantings in the 1870s, sandy soils of the Great Plains became much more valuable for grape cultivation than before.
Helvécia was settled by 501 vineyard workers, most of them from the Balaton wine country. It gained independence of nearby
Kecskemét
Kecskemét ( ) is a city with county rights in central Hungary. It is the List of cities and towns of Hungary, eighth-largest city in the country, and the county seat of Bács-Kiskun County, Bács-Kiskun.
Kecskemét lies halfway between the ca ...
in 1952.
[
]
Geography
It covers an area of and has a population of 4,522 people (2015). Most of its inhabitants work in agriculture.
Approximately half of the population lives in hamlets. The rest is distributed between two centres approximately 3 km apart from each other: the older Helvécia-Ótelep, and the Szabó-Sándor-telep or Újtelep, originally a housing area for the former collective farm.
Twin towns – sister cities
Helvécia is twinned with:Vršac
Vršac ( sr-Cyrl, Вршац, ) is a city in the autonomous province of Vojvodina, Serbia. As of 2022, the city urban area had a population of 31,946, while the city administrative area had 45,462 inhabitants. It is located in the geographical ...
, Serbia
* Zatín, Slovakia
Accident
In 1973, a severe level crossing accident took place here with 37 people at least killed.
References
Populated places in Bács-Kiskun County
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