Makó

Makó lies beside the Maros River on the southern Hungarian plain. By the fifteenth century it was a market for the agricultural produce of its district, but the wars of the Ottoman period repeatedly damaged the settlement. It was burned in 1552 and later rebuilt. A royal chamber charter of 1699 encouraged new settlers by allowing them to take land, granting four years' exemption from taxes and giving them a privileged legal status. In the eighteenth century the cultivation of onions became a distinctive part of the town's agriculture.