Portal:Miskolc/Selected article

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Miskolc was first mentioned in written sources around 1210. For centuries it was part of the estate belonging to the castle of the nearby Diósgyőr. King Louis I elevated Miskolc to the rank of market town; the city developed in a dynamic way, but during the Ottoman occupation of most of Hungary the development of Miskolc was brought to a standstill. The town was freed from Ottoman rule in 1687. During the war of independence against Habsburg rule in the early 18th century Prince Francis II Rákóczi put his headquarters in Miskolc. The imperial forces sacked and burnt the city in 1707. Four years later half of the population fell victim of a cholera epidemic. Miskolc recovered quickly and an age of prosperity began again. In 1724 Miskolc was chosen to be the city where the county hall of Borsod would be built; many other significant buildings were built in the 18th and 19th centuries.

These years brought prosperity, but the cholera epidemic of 1873 and the flood of 1878 took many lives. Several buildings were destroyed by the flood, but bigger and more beautiful buildings were built in their places. World War I did not affect the city directly, but many people died, either from warfare or from the cholera epidemic.

After the Treaty of Trianon, Hungary lost Kassa to Czechoslovakia, thus Miskolc became the sole regional centre of Northern Hungary. This was one of the reasons for the enormous growth of the city during the next decades; the other reason was the preparation for World War II, which established Miskolc as the national centre of heavy industry, a position the city maintained until the 1990s. Although Miskolc suffered a lot during the last year of the war, it recovered quickly and by absorbing the surrounding villages it became the second-largest city of Hungary with more than 200.000 inhabitants.

During its long history Miskolc survived fires, floods, plagues and foreign invasions but maintained its position as centre of North-East Hungary. Today it has about 175,000 inhabitants.