On your left, Széchenyi Square opens as a broad stone plaza framed by pastel baroque facades, with the tall Maria Column rising from a railed pedestal and Mary holding the child Jesus at the top.
This is Győr’s baroque main square... and like many handsome public rooms, it has seen both ceremony and cruelty. The buildings around you mostly date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The north side shows off a row of baroque palaces, while the Benedictine complex along the south edge gives the square a steady, watchful backdrop, as if faith itself had front-row seats.
What you see above ground is only half the story. Under these paving stones lies a stack of city history so dense it would make an archaeologist grin and reach for a brush. Finds here run from the Bronze Age to Roman, Migration-period, medieval, early modern, and modern layers. During excavations in two thousand eight and two thousand nine, archaeologists dug down about three and a half meters, far enough to reach the walking level of Roman Arrabona. Then they stopped on purpose, leaving deeper layers for future researchers. A rare case of a renovation not paving over curiosity for good.
But this square was not only a marketplace or a showpiece. In Ottoman times an underground prison lay here, later the pillory stood above it, and in front of today’s Apátúr House noble prisoners faced execution. In seventeen ten, Győr carried out its last witch-burning here, and in either seventeen fourteen or seventeen fifteen - the sources squabble a bit - officials beheaded Géczy Julianna, later made famous by Mór Jókai as the White Lady of Levoca. Literature turned her into a symbol of betrayal, but before that she was a real woman brought into a real square to die before a real crowd.
How do you stand in a place this elegant and make room for the fact that it once staged shame, sentencing, and death in full public view?
That tension is everywhere here. The Maria Column on the eastern half of the square looks devotional, triumphant even. Bishop Lipót Kolonich raised it to mark the recapture of Buda in sixteen eighty-six. Mary stands above with the child Jesus, while four saints guard the corners below: Saint Stephen, John the Baptist, Saint Anthony of Padua, and Saint Leopold. Nearby stood the ornate candelabrum that became Győr’s first gas-powered civic light. Of course the city gave its main stage better lighting.
And around the edges, the facades keep changing roles. One ornate baroque house here has already worn many hats over time. The narrow Vastuskós House turned a merchant’s idea into a landmark when Mátyás Zittrisch opened a spice shop in eighteen thirty-three and fixed an iron stump sign to the corner, borrowing the idea from Vienna and old guild traditions.
Since nineteen eighty-nine, cars no longer park here, and the square has belonged to pedestrians again. In a moment, we’ll head to the Xántus János Museum in the Apátúr House, where some of the city’s buried stories climb back into view... and since this is a public square, you can visit it at any hour, any day.
