The Gothic Protestant Church of Avas is the oldest building in the centre of the city of Miskolc in Northern Hungary. It was built in the 13th century as a small, Romanesque style church, and later it was expanded to a larger Gothic style church. In 1544, during the Ottoman occupation of Hungary the Turks set the church on fire. Because it was already a Protestant church, the Catholic owner of the Diósgyőr estate, Borbála Fánchy, didn't give her permission to use the wood from the nearby forests to rebuild the church, and it was rebuilt only more than twenty years later.
The organ of the church was built by József Angster in 1895. The acoustics of the church are very good, and concerts are held quite often.
The belfry was built in 1557. The bells have played a version of the Westminster Chimes every 15 minutes since 1941. Because of the noisy traffic, the chimes cannot be heard from too far away, however it is one of the best known sounds of the city. The National Theatre of Miskolc signals the beginning of a play with this sound.
The church is surrounded by a cemetery, where many famous sons of the city were buried, including the politicians Bertalan Szemere and László Palóczy, members of the Latabár actor dynasty, and the father of the poet Mihály Tompa.
Famous quotes containing the words gothic, protestant and/or church:
“Civil servants and priests, soldiers and ballet-dancers, schoolmasters and police constables, Greek museums and Gothic steeples, civil list and services list—the common seed within which all these fabulous beings slumber in embryo is taxation.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“There warn’t anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn’t any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summertime because it’s cool. If you notice, most folks don’t go to church only when they’ve got to; but a hog is different.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)