Merk Zsuzsa - Bálint Attila: Baja is town for 300 years - A Bajai Türr István Múzeum kiadványai 27. (Baja, 1999)

View of Baja (1872)

BAJA IS A TOWN FOR 300 YEARS.

People who live near rivers are probably more sensitive to the changing of the seasons then people who live elsewhere. The winter brings jagged drift-ice; the spring comes with fertilizing floods; the summer soothes the swimmer with the cool waves of the river; in the fall, mortality shows its face in the power of the water-all these experiences convince man that he lives near something eternal, partaking in it in his everydays.

Baja - or, as the local Germans call it, Frankenstadt - is a small town in the south of Bács-Kiskun county, on the left bank of the river Danube. It is the second biggest city of the county. Its region, which includes some of the Gemenc Nature Reserve, reaches well into the Dunántúl, or Transdanubia, neighboring Tolna county on the west. Baja was established on a high river bank where the western edges of the fertile loess plató of Bácska and the extensive flood-plains meet. The area is often referred to as Kineses Bácska, or "the Bácska Treasure Chest" because of the quality of Bácska's grain-growing lands. As a result of the peace treaty signed in Trianon after World War I, Hungary lost two thirds of her territory; today, most of Bácska belongs to Yugoslavia.

What makes Baja really attractive is its natural environment, the river branch of the Danube called Sugovica. With building on three sides and with an open view of the Sugovica on the fourth, and with roads crossing the square in the

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