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07 September 2008

Churches 3, Castles 1

We spent our last full day in Slovakia in the ancient town of Kežmarok. A large contingent of us (let's see if I can get everyone from memory: Pet'o and his daughters Zuzka and Andrejka, Katka and her children Mat'o and Alica, Vlasta, Helenka and her grandson Marek, Tessie's Babi and Deda, and of course Tessie and her parents; 14 of us all together) caught a bus from Poprad.
Kežmarok is one of those rare Slovak towns with a pronouncable name. (See Štrbské Pleso.) This it owes to its founding in 1269 as a German frontier town with a charter to sell cheese. (FYI: in Slovak, a ž is pronounced like the last g in garage. In fact, the Slovak word for garage is garaž.) It seems Kežmarok is a Slovacization of Käsemarkt, German for "cheese market."

Kežmarok City Hall:

The 20-minute ride brought us to the edge of town; from there we made a short walk to see the sights. Kežmarok is one of those showplace historical towns that regional schoolchildren visit on field trips, so most of our contingent were quite familiar with it already.

Our first stop was the Wooden Articular Church, which was built entirely of wood in 1688. No, it's not as obvious a point as that: entirely of wood means that there aren't any nails in it. With the tour presentation conducted in Slovak, I had to wait until just now to learn from Wikipedia that an articular church is a Lutheran church built according to the articles of the 1681 Congress of Sopron. Now you know, too. The church is a simple Greek-cross plan, and while it is made of wood, many surfaces were painted to emulate more costly materials like marble and gold.

We next visited another church of slightly more recent vintage: the late 19th c. New Evangelical Church right next to the articular church. This one contrasts dramatically with the previous church in its design and by its incorporation of a variety of architectural motifs including Byzantine, Moorish and Romanesque. It is now the final resting place of native Kezmarokan Imre Thököly, who fought against the Hapsburgs for religious freedom. He died in 1705 in Turkey, and his remains were not repatriated until 1906. Another notable feature of this church was its touching memorial for the local casualties of World War I. Only on closer inspection did I realize that the mural's soldier dying in the arms of an angel was wearing a German uniform.

Church #3 was the Church of the Holy Cross, the oldest church we saw, dating to 1498. Originally a Catholic church, this one became Protestant in 1548, but reverted to Catholicism in 1673. Each of the changes meant updating the interiors, so what's left is a mix of Gothic, Romanesque and Renaissance architecture.

Our last stop of the day was at the Thököly Chateau, a looming 15th c. castle near the edge of town, which is now a museum housing exhibits of town history. We saw rooms devoted to town guilds, town government, town defense, town education, town recreation and, curiously, Vojtech Alexander, the first radiologist in Slovakia. Tessie's favorite part: a crank to turn!

The end of the day brought us to the train station, itself something of an architectural statement:

Back in Poprad, we began packing for our upcoming journey to Prague.

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