Hortobágyi Nagycsárda, Hortobágy

The claim

A csárda on the puszta at the foot of the Nine-arched bridge, between the old river crossing and the Shepherds' Museum. Debrecen, which held this stretch of the salt road, put the house up in 1699 and made its tavern-keeper the toll collector. The monument register dates the fabric to that year and records rebuildings in 1781 and 1830. Hungarian cooking, music on the porch, and a museum of the herdsmen in the building opposite.

What the records show

Three publishers with no interest in the house agree on 1699, and one of them says what happened that year. The Hungarian monument register, entry 5333 under törzsszám 1851, dates the building to that year, records that it was rebuilt in 1781 and again in 1830, and classes it as a commercial and hospitality building — its original type given as a drinking and entertainment house. Hungarian Wikipedia's history of the parish puts the csárda up in the summer of 1699 on the Debrecen side of the bridgehead, where a wooden bridge of 1697 crossed the Hortobágy, and says the city of Debrecen also charged its tavern-keeper with taking the toll. The Hortobágy National Park Directorate, the state body that runs the puszta and the exhibition inside the house, dates the founding to 1 June 1699 and to an act of the city: on that day the council of Debrecen sent barrelled wine out with its wine inspector, János Tikos, to the toll point at Máta, otherwise Hortobágy, by the bridge that was then still timber, where some building of the state postal service probably already stood; beside the toll house and the post the city built its cellared tavern house, and the selling of the wine was put in the hands of the toll collector, a man named István Vasvári. The directorate writes that account from the Debrecen local historians it names, Lajos Zoltai and István Ecsedi, rather than from the city minute, which we have not read, so the year still rests on published local history and on the register's dating of purpose-built inn fabric — but it is now an account of wine being sold here in 1699 and not only of a building standing. The directorate adds what the rest of the fabric is: the wagon stand beside the road, rebuilt in 1785 with a hundred and forty-five thousand bricks in walls 95 centimetres thick that are still standing, kept the travellers' horses and is now the Shepherds' Museum; the nine-arched bridge outside was built between 1827 and 1833 on piers of dacite tuff; and the word csárda itself is first written down in Hungarian only in 1755, the older word for a house like this being vendégfogadó, a guest house. Petőfi stopped here in 1842 and wrote his song about the landlady of the Hortobágy inn, whom the directorate names as Viktória Pérchy, then keeping the house with her husband Antal Héczei Szabó; Richárd Füredi's tablet to the poet went up in 1923. The 1781 that circulates as a founding date is the register's rebuilding. Nobody states in words that a drink may be had without a meal; what is published is a drinks list that prices house wine by the decilitre, pálinka at two and four centilitres and one draught beer, and opening from eleven in the morning — and the national park, which shows its free exhibition inside the building during the csárda's own opening hours, treats the house as the working inn it describes. The tourism service gives the hours as eleven to eight every day, where OpenStreetMap has the house shut on Mondays and Tuesdays. Hungarian Wikipedia records that it has been open again since August 2011.

Dated evidence for Hortobágyi Nagycsárda, earliest first
Year	What	Source
1699	Claimed founding	Its listing
c.1699	Present building	Hungarian monument register, törzsszám 1851, read at muemlekem.hu, which dates the house 1699 and its rebuildings 1781 and 1830
1699	First record of a drinking house here	Hungarian monument register

What to look for inside

Put up in 1699 at the Debrecen end of the crossing on the salt road
Debrecen made its tavern-keeper the collector of the toll
Rebuilt in 1781 and in 1830, according to the monument register
The wagon shelter of 1785 opposite is now the Shepherds' Museum

Visiting

Hortobágyi Nagycsárda is in Hortobágy, Hungary, at Petőfi tér 1, 4071 Hortobágy. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

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