Hlohovec

Hlohovec appears in the Second Zobor Document of 1113 as Galgocz. Its Slavic name refers to hawthorn, while the German Freistad an der Waag recalled a free town on the Váh. It received town privileges in 1362. During the seventeenth-century struggles between Habsburg and Ottoman forces, the town came under Ottoman control in 1663. Accounts differ over when that occupation ended.

In 1720 the Erdődy family acquired the town and estate, and later rebuilding transformed the older castle into a noble residence. Its grounds include an eighteenth-century riding school and garden pavilion, as well as an Empire theatre from 1802. The Gothic church of Saint Michael and the Franciscan church and monastery preserve other layers of the town's history.