How to get there

Club Hotel Hortobágy ****

Address: H-4071 Hortobágy–Máta
Telephone: +36–52/369–020
Fax: +36–52/369–027
E–mail: hortobagy@hnhotels.hu

Hortobágy — harmony of nature and human

Hortus Naturae Hotels offers several programs for its guests in the Hortobágy. Hungary's first national park has been inscribed to the World Heritage List as a cultural landscape since 1999. The Hortobágy, a landscape shaped by pastoral societies is an outstanding example of the 2000-year long harmonious interaction between nature and human beings. The Hortobágy is Europe's largest coherent natural grassland and Hungary's most extended nature protection area covering more than two thousand square kilometers.

Hortobágy — a unique biome

The Hortobágy used to be an area covered with rich flora, forests and reed. After 1855 when River Tisza was regulated the Hortobágy dried up and transformed to another formation of nature. Thus it is also formed by human beings, not only nature. Hortobágy National Park is the only one where farming is still alive. Besides traditional outdoor stock raising – grey cattle, 'racka' sheep, 'mangalica' pig, buffalo and sport horse breeding serves the purposes of gene preservation – the world's largest fishpond system can also be found in the Hortobágy. The most famous bird of the landscape is crane, a flock of about fifty thousand birds cover the grasslands in every spring and autumn; this episode of their migration is a world famous spectacle. Besides cranes other characteristic birds of the Hortobágy are wild geese, coots, crakes, herons, stone curlews and the rare great bustard. Typical predators are imperial eagles, red-footed falcons and hawks nestling in the periphery of the grasslands. This rich flora and fauna constitute a unique biome.

Kurgans of the Hortobágy

The first signs of human presence in the Hortobágy are kurgans (also called – improperly – Cumanian hillocks) rose in the Copper and Bronze Age.

These artificial housing hills, burying places, observation points and border hills are especially important from both anthropological and archeological viewpoints. Villages of the Hortobágy were established mainly in the Middle Ages. Along the so called saline way, the commercial route passing through the Hortobágy, the first inns were built in the 17th century. These inns were located 10-12 km from their neighbors and provided accommodation and supplies for travelers. Some of the restplaces – Látókép, Kadarcs, Kishortobágy, Nagyhortobágy, Meggyes, Patkós and Kaparó – are still waiting for visitors as a restaurant of museum. A symbol of the Hortobágy is the Nine-Arch Bridge built in 1827 connecting the two sides of the river that named the grasslands.

Bandit romantics of the Hortobágy

Recently the area of the Hortobágy mostly consists of natural habitats, saline grasslands, meadows, lakes and backwaters. Water habitats are locations of bird nestling and migration of European importance. Until now almost 350 bird species were registered here.

The name of Hortobágy associates with bandit legends of the 1800s. Besides bandit romantics the traditions of pastoral life occur in the ethnography of the Hortobágy. The Hortobágy Inn next to the Nine-Arch Bridge and the Pastoral Museum located in the one-time building of Big Stall ('Nagyállás') provide deep insight into folk traditions, and an exhibition of the Hortobágy National Park can be seen in the building of the Circle Barn ('Körszín'). From the 1890s the regular Bridge Fair attracts visitors in summer.