Horváth M. Ferenc (szerk.): Vác The heart of the Danube Bend. A historical guide for residents and globetrotters (Vác, 2009)
Tartalom
154 THE 19TH CENTURY - THE CENTURY OF GREAT CHANGES the opposite side of the road. In the second half of the 1870s a riding school is built in the courtyard of the barrack to provide an equestrian course for officers. In 1896 the town sells the whole building to the treasury of the army for 25 thousand forints, and by next year the three-storey barrack is already built. Another remarkable building in the street is the two-storey Roller [family's] House (number 21), the former Baroque bishopric house (today a dwelling house) and the two-storey Freysinger House (no longer there). Next door is the cantor's house (today a students' hostel called Teréz Karács stands in its place) closing down one side of the road towards Konstantin Square with a front garden. The Cathedral in the 1870s Géza király Square of an intimate atmosphere Walking around King Géza Square (Sebestyén Square until 1888) we can say that the surroundings of the Franciscan Church and Monastery have hardly changed in the course of time. The farmyard of the friars is separated from the rest of the square Konstantin Square in the late 19th century Karolina School I by a fence and a gate, and there are single-storey houses on both sides of the peg shaped square. The stone cross erected in memory of the victims of the plague epidemic of 1740 is still in the middle of the square. The ecclesiastic buildings of Cathedral (later Konstantin) Square, the ecclesiastic centre of the town, determine the atmosphere of the square. Apart from Sundays and public holidays it looks rather deserted; what is worse, sometimes even farm animals are driven across it. Partly in order to put an end to this, Prebend Kázmér Gasparik has 33 stone columns set around the cathedral in the 1840s. In 1891 Bishop Konstantin Schuster proceeds with the landscaping of the square by planting trees there. At the special request of the town he permits the townspeople to continue to walk across the square. One of the remarkable buildings of the square is the prebendal house (number 11) where Russian Commander Paskevich stays in 1849. In 1905 the Karolina Primary and Higher Elementary Girls'School is built in the place of the former, out-of-date elementary school not far from the parsonage. The Romanticstyle corner building opposite the Bishop's Palace, built by Bishop József Antal Peitler in 1878, houses the unified Bishopric, Prebendal and Seminary Library. The Piarist Grammar School, which has students from not only Pest but also from Nógrád and Hont counties, is extended with a new wing in 1893 (Konstantin Wing) by the design of Sándor Péts. Next to the garden of the bishop's palace (today Galamb Street) is the building of the mano-
