Hungary > Nagycenk

Nagycenk

This settlement was one of the family estates of the world famous Hungarian politician and statesman Count Istvan Szechenyi, who amongst other activities, built the first bridge in Budapest, fowided the Academy of Sciences, started steam boats on the Danube and initiated professional horse-breeding. This stately home, built in the 1700s, was converted by the Count in 1838, with the introduction of gas lighting and running water. It was then that the building acquired its baroque, classicist form. On the ground floor the Istvan Szechenyi Memorial Museum can now be found. These rooms, with their nineteenth-century furniture, contain documents relating to Szechenyi's work. An attraction famed far and wide is the line of lime trees leading from the mansion to the family mausoleum. Even American textbooks refer to it as a horticultural wonder. The 645 small-leafed lime trees, planted in 1754, stretch along a 2600-metre road. The trees are today 16 metres tall, and their trunks are more than a metre in diameter.