Somogyvár

Somogyvár was a religious and political centre on a hill south of Lake Balaton. In 1091 King Ladislaus I founded a Benedictine monastery here dedicated to St Giles, bringing monks from Saint-Gilles in southern France. Its great basilica and richly carved stonework testified to the abbey's importance, and its first abbots came from France. In the sixteenth century the monastery was strengthened with ramparts and a tower against the Ottoman advance. It fell in 1543, and the buildings were burned during the fighting that followed, leaving the great abbey in ruins.