Balassagyarmat

Northern Hungary

Balassagyarmat is large, long established township, a few thousand people short of being a city, on the south bank of the River Ipoly, which is the Hungarian-Slovak border.
Nográd county and the Balassagyarmat district capital.
Along with the many municipal, government schools, high schools, technical institutes, court, churches, hospital, museums, casino and many other outstanding, interesting building Balassagyarmat also have a English Lady's Deportment School.
Balassagyarmat's history stretches back to the Bronze Age or before.
The Turks laid a two weeks siege against the Balassagyarmat's Fortress in 1552, some of the ruins still visible beside the River Ipoly.
Balassagyarmat was known as Nagy (Great) or Ipoly-Gyarmat until the Turks were driven from Hungary, when the township became Royal property.
The Royal Kuria gifted it to the Balassa family later, hence the present name.
Ferdinand II signed the Peace Treaty here with the Turkish Ali Pasha in 1626.
On the 8th of July 1849 the Hungarian Forces under General Poltenberg battled with the Russian Forces just outside the township.

Another one of those places where my family was made to live by the communists for some time in my younger years.

After living and settled down in one place, they made us shift to another place. Usually about every year or two, depending on the party bureaucrats's mood.

In fact we had to live in three different places in Balassagyarmat.

The Mayor and his family were my family's good friends, while we lived here. He was replaced by a communist party member and was made to shift to a small village, to break-up old friendships, contacts and influence. I remember we all chipped in to help them to shift, first into a small flat in outer Balassagyarmat, later to small village about 50km from town.

A very nice little town.

1996

You can click on these photos for an enlargement.


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2000


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