Nyirbator

Nyirbator was the seat of the Bathory family, and their money built two late Gothic churches at the turn of the sixteenth century that are out of proportion to a small town on the eastern plain. One, now Reformed, is a single tall hall with a net vault and the Bathory tomb; the other, the Minorite church, keeps a set of Baroque carved wooden altars made in the eighteenth century by a Slovak workshop, the largest of them the Passion altar, dense with figures and unmistakable once seen. Between and beside them stands a free-standing wooden bell tower of the seventeenth century, around thirty metres tall with four corner turrets, one of the best of the type in the country.

What you actually see

• The wooden bell tower - a seventeenth-century timber structure with corner turrets.
• The Passion altar - Baroque carved wood dense with figures.
• The Reformed hall church - a single tall Gothic space with net vaulting.
• The Bathory tomb - the family that built both churches.

When to go

April to October. Half a day. Both churches have limited hours and may need to be opened on request; the tourist office arranges access. Summer brings a music festival.

Honest expectations

Opening hours are short and unreliable outside summer, and a wasted trip is possible. The town itself is plain and poor. Interpretation is largely in Hungarian.

Nearby

Mariapocs is north-west; the Romanian border lies east.