Horváth M. Ferenc: Vác Magyarország kincsestára (Vác, 2018)

Small Vác is a village within the town, built at the beginning of the 18th century. During the Ottoman rule in the 16th and 17th centuries the majority of the inhabitants of Vác converted to the Protestant faith, but after the liberation of the town in 1686, Catholic religion gradually regained its strength, and Protestant inhabitants had to move outside the mother town. In 1714 a new serf village that remained independent until 1770 was established along the Danube, which to this day has preserved its characteristic rural townscape, and its inhabitants still follow the Protestant way of life. The village was separated from the mother town by a triumphal arch called Stone Gate by the inhabitants of Vác, built in 1764, and the Academy for Noble Youth, the Theresianum — today a penitentiary and prison, with a monument of the revolution of 1956 at its side wall - also built around that time. After decades of struggle, in 1770 Small Vác merged with the mother town, Bishopric Vác, and its inhabitants were freed from some of the burdens of serfdom. After the issue of the Decree ofTolerance by Joseph II in 1781, in 1793 they could build their church still standing today, they could exercise their religion freely, and they could have their children educated.

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