Sopron - Part 2 - The City, Part III.

This is the third part of my travel blog about Sopron, the beautiful city from Hungary that situates close to the Austrian border. If you've missed the other parts, scroll down to find the links I've listed for you.

Szent Domonkos Rend church, donated by Batthyány Erzsébet to the Dominican order.

The Dominican order is a mendicant Catholic religious order founded by the Spanish priest Dominic of Caleruega, who lived between 1170 and 1221.

Memorial house of Révai Miklós, linguist, university professor, founder of Hungarian historical linguistics.

As I have mentioned in my other posts, Sopron is not a huge city, only has only 62000 inhabitants but it's an old city and modern times have not changed the city center too much, which is a very good thing. A good part of the old city center is paved with cobble stones. These are not the old ones that were used once but are new but still, I really appreciate the decision to keep the look.

This is the Orsolya square with this nice Maria fountain, that was built in the second half of the 18th century. During the bombings the fountain got hit but was restored later with child Jesus in her arms.

The name Orsolya comes from Saint Ursula the legendary Romano-British Christian saint who lived in the 4th century.

This is the building of the Ursulines, built in 1747.

This is a historical street of Sopron with a very sad story, which unfortunately is true.

According to this plaque this street was the ghetto created for the Jewish people in 1944. The plaque was placed here in 1996 by the city council in memory of all the people killed in Auschwitz - Birkenau.

On March 19, 1944 German troupes marched in and occupied the city. In May they made a list with all the Jewish people, that contained 1803 people, plus 54 who in the meantime were baptized and belonged to another religion. In the middle of the month there was assigned a street and obliged the Jews to move there. This street was one of those. Doctors could stay at their homes but later they had to leave and move to the ghettos. There was a curfew set up, they were not allowed to leave their forced homes between 9 pm and 7 am, and they could only go shopping between 10am and 12am to the places they were allowed to. On July 5 they were forced into wagons and taken to Auschwitz. The trip took 3 days, they got there on July 8. It was a Saturday. 1857 people were taken from Sopron to Auschwitz in total. 1532 of them have died in the concentration camps, 325 were let free and came home after the war.

This is the house where Boros Liána lived between 1933 and 1944 till thanks to the Hungarian authorities she was captured by Germans, taken to Auschwitz where she was killed. She was 11. This plaque is to commemorate her life, set by the Jews of Sopron with the help of Walter Dezső.

These narrow streets are wonderful in my opinion. I'm not sure how happy I would be to took out f the window and see another person's living room but it's nice from the outside.

This is another interesting historical building, unfortunately there were some construction works going on at the moment of our visit and could not get a better photo.

This building was once the Esterházy palace. The oldest part of the building was built in the 14th century. In 1614 was bought by Esterházy Miklós who was the next door neighbor and built it up in baroque style. That is when the facade was built as well. In October 1957 the building gave home to the Central Mining Museum.

This is the house where András Rauch (1592-1656), the Austrian-born organist and composer, lived and worked. In 1629 he sought refuge in Sopron from the harassment of the Austrian counter-reformation.

This is an old book shop that attracts whoever is passing by.

The display in front of the shop is amazing. Those old suitcases full of books make you stop and go in hoping to find some old treasure you could bring home. Inside however you'll be part of a big surprise that is not exactly good.

This looks like a second hand book shop which is a lovely place but it's not exactly that. Old books are mixed with new books and when you find a good one you see that the price is ten times what you are hoping for because the book is categorized as new. I've seen mix book shops but the new books were displayed separately so you could know from the start what you're getting into. This is not that place. However, it worth a try.

This is it for today, stay tuned, next time I'm going to show you the town hall with a military parade.

Read my other blogs about Sopron:

• Nagyi Konyhája, Granny's Kitchen - Sopron, Hungary
• Sopron - Part 1 - #Piknik30
• Sopron - Part 2 - The City, Part I.
• Sopron - Part 2 - The City, Part II.