In the footsteps of culture
We invite you for a little time travel - you will hear wonderful stories of history about the buildings, parks, and programs of Sopron - join us!
Day 1
Walk in the city centre: Fire tower - Museum Quartier - Goat church -Castle Wall Alley -Scarbantia Forum - Pharmacy Museum - Old Synagogue
Who would not know the Fire Tower, the landmark of Sopron, which forms the Museum Quarter through the connection of three other historical buildings - the Storno House, the General’s House and the Fabricius House. The past and present come to life in their interactive showrooms.
On Sopron’s Main Square stands the Benedictine church, commonly known as the Goat Church. According to legend, the church was built from a treasure found by a goat, but in reality, there is a murder case in the background, which explains the name. A person named Henrik Geissel (whose surname means “goat” in English), who committed a murder, donated the money for building the church tower as an atonement for himself and his family.
You will enjoy walking along the Castle Wall Promenade, walking along the narrow, cosy, cobbled streets, and you can immerse yourself in the present.
Beneath Sopron’s city centre, 4.5 metres below the ground, lies a Roman city, Scarbantia, a section of which can be seen in the archaeological display area under the Tourinform office.
The Pharmacy Museum on the Main Square is the first pharmaceutical museum in the country, opened in 1968. The furniture of the former pharmacy is on display, as well as other pharmaceutical and medical relics of the town.
The medieval Old Synagogue is of special value, as only three medieval synagogues in Europe are known to have preserved the original triple division (men’s synagogue - women’s synagogue ritual bath).
Day 2
A stone‘s throw from the city centre: St. Michael Visitor Centre - Baker Museum - Lenck Villa
The most outstanding tourist attraction in the Farmer-Poncichter district is the ST. MICHAEL Church And Visitor Centre. With its dimensions and proportions, it is the most important Gothic building in the country after the Matthias Church in the Buda Castle.
In the Baker's House, where a bakery was operating already in the 16th century, you can get an insight into the lifestyle of a late-19th-century baker family.
The second longest square in Central Europe, Deák tér, with its shady benches, fountains and playground, is an excellent place to relax and unwind, just a stone’s throw from the city centre. Here we find the magnificent Lenck Villa, a special exhibition site of the Sopron Museum. The exhibition is of ethnographic type, but it is out of the ordinary. It tells the story of where and how the different lifestyles of the craftsmen and the upper classes of the city meet. In the charmingly beautiful bourgeois villa, objects from the museum’s ethnographic collection, the world of craftsmen’s workshops and old crafts come to life. The plot is a family wedding that evokes the manners, dressing and dining habits of the time: the bourgeois family of the villa and their staff are feverishly preparing for the wedding of their daughter Liza, going from workshop to workshop to make sure everything is ready for the big day when the newlyweds swear their eternal fidelity.
Day 3
An open-air day: Taródi Castle - Villa Row - Sopronbánfalva, Monastery
Perhaps Sopron’s most unusual attraction is the Taródi Castle, also known as the Fool’s Castle or Owl Castle, which is largely a tribute to the work of one man, István Taródi, who spent 50 years building it from 150 railway carriages of bricks and stones.
By walking along the Villa row in Alsó-Lőverek, you can see the typical one- and two-storey Alpine-style villas built at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The path leads via the Stairs of the Saints to the Pálos-Carmelite Monastery Of Sopronbánfalva And Queen Of Heaven Church. In the present-day village of Sopronbánfalva, a small chapel was built in honour of Saint Farkas in 1441, which was taken care of by a Pauline hermit and a few years later his order settled there. The church was built together with the monastery around the time of the foundation of the Pauline monastery, around 1482. The earliest Hungarian copy of the picture of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa was placed here.
Day 4: Regional explorations: Fertőd, Esterházy Palace - Fertőrákos, Cave Theatre
The area around Sopron also offers countless cultural experiences. In Fertőd, the imposing building of the Esterházy Castle welcomes you with its renewed exhibition spaces, diverse programs and huge park areas. Margit Cziráky’s Rose Garden is definitely worth a visit!The luxurious scenery of the Baroque-Rococo period can be discovered in the exhibition room of the Esterházy Picture Gallery and in the Esterházy Porcelain Cabinet in the west wing of the palace. The exhibition can be visited as part of the castle tour, which starts every half hour, or you can choose the interactive options provided by the visual guide.The grandiosity of the current estate can be admired from the Belvedere viewpoint in the middle of the palace above the clock tower and you can experience for a moment how proud Miklós Esterházy „the Magnificent“ was of this wonderful sight.
In Fertőrákos, the Cave Theatre, with its excellent acoustics, will host a series of high-end performances, while the exhibition at the Stone Quarry and the Rock Buckthorn nature trail are both very special and worth a visit.
In the evenings, the programmes of the Petőfi Theatre of Sopron or the Cave Theatre of Fertőrákos will make your day complete.