Things to do
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Minaret of Eger
Forty metres of fluted stone, fourteen sided, left standing when the mosque at its base was demolished in the nineteenth century. Ninety eight steps spiral up to the balcony, and the shaft is tight enough that anyone uneasy in small spaces should stop at the door. It ranks among the northernmost Ottoman minarets still standing in Europe.
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Dobó Square
Eger's main square slopes below the castle walls, edged on one side by the twin towered Minorite church and its baroque front, and centred on a bronze of István Dobó, who commanded the defence of 1552. Cafés take the sunny edge, and most walks up to the castle gate begin here. Markets and open air concerts use the space through the warmer months.
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Eger Castle
In 1552 a garrison of roughly two thousand held this hill against an Ottoman army many times its size, and the story is still taught in Hungarian schools. The castle fell in 1596. What survives is a gothic palace, bastions looking down over the rooftops and a system of cellars, the kazamaták, seen with a guide.
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Eger Cathedral
József Hild designed it for Archbishop Pyrker and it was finished in 1837, a neoclassical basilica of three naves whose portico of saints faces the lyceum across the road. Organ music is played under the dome around midday from spring through autumn, which is the half hour worth timing a walk around.
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Eger Turkish Bath
A bath has stood over this spring since Ottoman rule, and the octagonal pool beneath the dome, cut in the early seventeenth century, is the original. Radon rises with the thermal water through the stones of the pool floor, at around thirty degrees. Steam rooms, a hamam and modern wings were added around it, and the historic section fills quickly at weekends.
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Valley of the Beautiful Women
A horseshoe of cellar doors cut into volcanic tuff sits twenty minutes on foot from the centre, where growers pour Egri Bikavér and the local whites straight from the barrel. Around two hundred cellars line the valley and a few dozen open to visitors. Evenings fill up in summer, while earlier in the day the tasting is slower and the cellars cooler.
