Martonvásár (F5) A favourite destination for music lovers on a summer’s day, Martonvásár is a thirty-minute drive from the capital. It is here, in the forty-acre English park belonging to the Brunszvik Palace, that the internationally renowned Beethoven concerts are held in July and August, using a stage beside the park’s fairy-tale lake. It is a very special environment, lending an enchanting atmosphere to the performances, which are given by the famous names of Hungarian classical music and its most celebrated orchestras.
The palace is an 18th century construction, rebuilt in English-Neogothic style. Beethoven was a guest on several occasions and composed a number of famous works here, including the Appassionata sonata. Historical gossip talks of love stories, but we do not know exactly which of the Count’s female family members was the composer’s silent muse. Some presume it to have been Teréz Brunszvik, who later became famous as the founder of the first kindergarten in Hungary.
There is much to see in the palace and in the Beethoven museum which is housed there, and which contains scores, the composer’s piano, a lock of his hair and the correspondence which he conducted with the female members of the Count’s family. The palace is also home to the Agricultural Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Majkpuszta (E4) It was not only silence which surrounded the Camaldoli monks, a silent order living in Majkpuszta, but also the forests of the Vértes Hills. Trees now conceal the listed buildings comprising the separate houses of the monks which became their cells, the 18th-century Baroque monastery building and the well-preserved tower of the church, the rest of which has fallen into ruin over the years. The hermitage and its environment, which belonged to the domain of Duke Esterházy, is a special place. The monks’ houses, consisting of four rooms each of which served as a hermit’s dwelling, were constructed symmetrically in three lines around the church. These are now tourist accommodation. You can rent one of the houses and live for a few days like the hermits of the past. Baroque musical notes can be heard coming from the church tower. Pál Esterházy, the aristocrat-composer, wrote his work entitled Harmonia Caelestis in 1711, and parts of this are played by the tower clock every quarter of an hour.

Csókakő (E5) This was seen as an unconquerable castle in the Middle Ages and guarded the road leading from Győr to Komárom. Now only isolated parts of the various constructions can be seen in the 13th-century fortress, for example the beautiful Gothic gateway. The community beneath the castle, which enjoys one of the most stunning locations of any of the settlements in the Vértes Hills, became established in the 1750s. It is part of the Mór wine growing region and is famous for Ezerjó wine, which many people think is the best in the region. Today the community, which numbers a thousand inhabitants, is a favourite rural tourism destination. The region is especially popular among those exploring the countryside, and one of Hungary’s best-known tourist routes leads here.

Nádasdladány (E5) This settlement is famous for its Tudor-style palace. The original 18th-century Baroque residence of the aristocratic Nádasdy family assumed its current shape a hundred years later. The library is a unique sight, with its wooden-coffered ceiling, twisted columns and gallery complete with wrought-iron decorative work. The so-called Hall of the Ancestors, which was once adorned with portraits of the family, is now completely covered with carved wood panelling. Part of the palace park is a protected area where unusual plants such as the silver fir and the Empress Tree can be seen.

Fehérvárcsurgó (E5) A beautiful place imbued with the breath of history. There is an earthwork fortification, constructed in the Iron Age, where the graves of 9 chieftains from the 1st millennium survive to this day. The Catholic church of the village is famous not only for its 12th-century foundation stones, but also for its statue of the Madonna of Csurgó which was presented to the village by the world famous sculptor Amerigo Tot who was born here and lived for a long time in Italy. The hundred-room Károlyi Palace, with its ornamented reception rooms and courtyard chapel, stands in a 45-hectare English park and is currently under renovation. The cultural centre established here is a venue for Europe-wide events.