Perkáta 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 ...

. Straddling the old Buda–Pécs postal road on the Mezőföld loess plain, Perkáta lies west of the Danube at

Dunaújváros Dunaújváros (; also known by #Etymology and names, alternative names) is an industrial city in Fejér County, Central Hungary. It is a city with county rights. Situated 70 kilometres (43 miles) south of Budapest on the Danube, the city is best ...

and south-east of

Székesfehérvár Székesfehérvár (; ; ; ; Serbian language, Serbian: ''Стони Београд''; ), known colloquially as Fehérvár (), is a city in central Hungary, and the country's ninth-largest city. It is the Regions of Hungary, regional capital of C ...

. The cadastral area covers , most of it large-block arable rotated between wheat, sunflower and maize; poplar shelter-belts planted after the 1956 “great wind-storm” still parcel out the fields. Modern

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 ...

returns count 3,844 permanent residents in 2022, a slow rebound after the post-socialist low of 3,611 in 2011.

History

First mentioned in a 1162 charter as Percata, the settlement passed through royal, episcopal and noble hands before the

Ottoman 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 ...

left it deserted. Resettlement began in 1696 when

Ferenc Nádasdy Count Ferenc II Nádasdy de Nádasd et Fogarasföld (6 October 1555 – 4 January 1604) was a Hungarian nobleman and a distinguished soldier. His family, the Nádasdy family, was one of the wealthiest and most influential of the era in Hung ...

invited Catholic Hungarian and Slovak peasants to cultivate the "praedium Perkatha". By 1840 the village had grown to 2,100 people and sported 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 ...

Church of St Stephen (consecrated 1763, Classicist

façade A façade or facade (; ) is generally the front part or exterior of a building. It is a loanword from the French language, French (), which means "frontage" or "face". In architecture, the façade of a building is often the most important asp ...

rebuilt 1852). Its

baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

high altar and

pulpit A pulpit is a raised stand for preachers in a Christian church. The origin of the word is the Latin ''pulpitum'' (platform or staging). The traditional pulpit is raised well above the surrounding floor for audibility and visibility, accesse ...

were carved by the Johann Mayer workshop of

Győr Győr ( , ; ; names of European cities in different languages: E-H#G, names in other languages) is the main city of northwest Hungary, the capital of Győr-Moson-Sopron County and Western Transdanubia, Western Transdanubia region, and – halfwa ...

and rank among the county's best late-

Rococo Rococo, less commonly Roccoco ( , ; or ), also known as Late Baroque, is an exceptionally ornamental and dramatic style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpte ...

woodworks. During the

Hungarian Revolution of 1848 The Hungarian Revolution of 1848, also known in Hungary as Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence of 1848–1849 () was one of many Revolutions of 1848, European Revolutions of 1848 and was closely linked to other revolutions of 1848 in ...

, local notary József Jantyik organised a volunteer troop that fought at Pákozd; his memorial

obelisk An obelisk (; , diminutive of (') ' spit, nail, pointed pillar') is a tall, slender, tapered monument with four sides and a pyramidal or pyramidion top. Originally constructed by Ancient Egyptians and called ''tekhenu'', the Greeks used th ...

stands beside the church wall.

Győry Castle

Perkáta's architectural show-piece is Győry Castle (), a three-winged, U-shaped manor built in 1802 for Ferenc Győry, assessors to Fejér County. The

ashlar Ashlar () is a cut and dressed rock (geology), stone, worked using a chisel to achieve a specific form, typically rectangular in shape. The term can also refer to a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, a ...

-faced ''

corps de logis In architecture, a ''corps de logis'' () is the principal or main block, or central building of a mansion, country or manor house, castle, or palace. It contains the rooms of principal business, the state apartments and the ceremonial or formal ...

'' fronts an English landscape park once famed for

black walnut ''Juglans nigra'', the eastern American black walnut, is a species of deciduous tree in the walnut family, Juglandaceae, native to central and eastern North America, growing mostly in riparian zones. Black walnut is susceptible to thousand can ...

avenues. Nationalised in 1945 and long neglected, the mansion was restored between 2009 and 2013 with EU Regional Fund support; it now houses a wedding hall, village museum and the Sino–Hungarian friendship exhibition that recalls Perkáta's twinning with

Tianjin Tianjin is a direct-administered municipality in North China, northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the National Central City, nine national central cities, with a total population of 13,866,009 inhabitants at the time of the ...

Wuqing District Wuqing District () is a district of Tianjin, bordering Hebei province to the north and west, Beijing Municipality to the northwest, Baodi District to the northeast, and Beichen District and Xiqing District to the southeast/south. Administrative di ...

since 2002.

Economy and culture

Agriculture dominates employment, but proximity to Dunaújváros's

steelworks A steel mill or steelworks is an industrial plant for the manufacture of steel. It may be an integrated steel works carrying out all steps of steelmaking from smelting iron ore to rolled product, but may also be a plant where steel semi-fini ...

and the

M6 motorway The M6 motorway is the longest motorway in the United Kingdom. It is located entirely within England, running for just over from the Midlands to the border with Scotland. It begins at Junction 19 of the M1 motorway, M1 and the western end of t ...

feeds a commuter stream; 41 % of the workforce travelled out daily in the 2022 survey. Local identity centres on two annual events: the St Stephen’s Day Harvest Fair (20 August), where

threshing Threshing or thrashing is the process of loosening the edible part of grain (or other crop) from the straw to which it is attached. It is the step in grain preparation after reaping. Threshing does not remove the bran from the grain. History of ...

demonstrations revive nineteenth-century techniques, and the Chestnut Festival each October, when folk dancers from twin towns in France and China perform in the castle courtyard. Cycling tourism is rising thanks to the sign-posted "Great Plain to Danube" route, which uses leafy canal banks to link Perkáta with the Danube flood-forest at

Rácalmás Rácalmás () is a town in Central Transdanubia, in Fejér county, Hungary. Located on the right side of river Danube around 61 km south of Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most ...

and the Roman limes remains of

References

External links

* in Hungarian
Street map
{{DEFAULTSORT:Perkata Populated places in Fejér County