HLOHOVEC / Galgóc / Freistadtl. Around the turn of the 12th and 13th century the fortified site of Hlohovec was mentioned as Colgoucy by the so-called 'Anonymous,' a notary of King Béla III (or II) of Hungary, in his Gesta Hungarorum. It had been the seat of a royal castle district (Hung. várispánság; Lat. comitatus castri) until the early 1300s, when it was acquired by the oligarch Máté Csák. After his death in 1321, the castle and its appurtenances were escheated to the Crown again. As a border marker the castle had a strategic function during the Turkish occupation of central Hungary (1541-1686). Taken by Turkish troops in 1663, it was recuperated for the Hungarian Crown by the Treaty of Vasvár in 1664. In the 16th century, the town of Hlohovec had a secondary school and a Protestant printing house; Bálint Mantskovit was a typographer here between 1585-1588. In the 1850s, the majority of the burghers were Slovaks - mainly agricultural labourers and wood-workers. Owing to its role as a port of rafters, the town was also a busy trade junction.

Bibliography: Benczur 1846, Ernst Teréz, Kelecsényi, Krickel, Kristó, Lovcsányi, Luppa, Marosi, Mednyánszky 1844, Mednyánszky 1981, Pechány, Rupp

THE ERDŐDY MANSION was built for the owner of the surrounding estate, Count József Erdődy, on the site of Hlohovec castle in the middle of the 18th century. In the account of his travels in Upper Hungary published in 1831, Joseph Adalbert Krickel recounts his stay in Hlohovec, giving details about the riding school, the stables, the shed with thirty-two fine coaches and the theatre in which Beethoven gave a concert as a guest of the Erdődys. In the middle of the 19th century, the owner granted free public access to the garden surrounding the mansion, which housed a sizeable library as well as a collection of antiquities. A pearwood Nativity creche once owned by Thomas Bakócz, Archbishop of Esztergom (1497-1521), - and held by Erdődy tradition to have firstly belonged to King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1458-1490) - was set up on the Rococo altar of the mansion chapel.

Bibliography: Benczur 1846, Divald, Krickel, Lovcsányi, Luppa, Marosi, Mednyánszky 1844, Mednyánszky 1981