Background Info in Szentendre

A mere 19 kilometres away of Budapest, the village was originally settled by Serb refugees and still retains a South Slav air, not only in the Orthodox churches and Cyrillic-inscribed monuments but also in its Mediterranean townscape. Much of the Serb population abandoned the city in the 19th century, when it was hit by floods and crop disease. These natural disasters are indirectly responsible for Szentendre's current popularity: because industrial development was impeded, the town's Baroque appearance was preserved intact. Artists rediscovered this picturesque village in the 1920s and turned it into an art colony. Tourists followed in the 1960s and 1970s, and today they greatly outnumber Szentendre's permanent population of 20,000.