Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 1. (Budapest, 2006)

Abstracts

Therefore it is impossible to follow their course as "free royal towns" after 1848. The only common feature of free royal towns is that - compared to others having more humble "legal backgrounds" - these settlements had an advantage by acquiring the municipal rank and by the establishment of the local administration. (Only two former free royal towns got into the legal status of municipality in the bourgeois age.) The prominent group of free royal towns underwent a similar development in the second half of the nineteenth century they became municipalities. Some of them functioned as regional centres for several counties. They were also successful in the period of bourgeois urban development (only one of them, the former rich mining town, Selmecbánya/Banská Stiavnica-Slovakia declined spectacularly). Most of the free royal towns classified into the "middle level" became county seats, so they did not loose their position in the hierarchical rank of towns in Hungary. However, they did not become "modern" towns either. They functioned as administrative, ecclesiastic, educational centres and had small population. The decline of the settlements belonging to the lower level of the free royal towns (33 settlements) started already in the feudal age. Most of these settlements preserved their urban rank, but in a functional aspect they were confined to the periphery of urban life (Ruszt, Szentgyörgy, Újbánya/Nová Bana-Slovakia, Korpona/Krupina:Slovakia, Bazin/PezinokSlovakia etc.).