Szombathely - Cathedral
Our Cathedral is standing between the Episcopal Palace and the Student Hostel of the Diocese (once seminar) making an artificial unit together. The church was erected in honour of Our Lady. Its basis forms a Latin cross, as for its style, it is neoclassic baroque. The façade is straddled by two slim towers. The outer façade is proportioned by four Tuscan and
four Ionic pillars. On the pillars there are the statues of Moses, St. John the Baptist, St. Peter and St. Paul Apostles. They and the statues inside the church on the side of the main altar were made by master sculptor Philipp Prokop (1740-1814). The woman sitting above the pillars is holding a chalice (faith), the children have a hook (hope) and a cross (love).
As far as its measurements are concerned, the Cathedral is the third biggest church in Hungary after the one in Esztergom and Eger, seating 5000 people. This monumental neoclassic baroque building was erected between 1791 and 1797. Its measurements (including the walls): its length is 78.7 meters (258.2 feet), the width of the transept is 38 metres (124.67 feet), and the width of the nave is 24 metres (78.74 feet). Its height inside is 27.18 metres (89.17 feet), its outer height including the towers up to the tip of the cross is 62.5 metres (205.05 feet).
The original ceiling pictures were painted by Josepf Winterhalder (1743-1807) and Anton Spreng (1770-1845). Unfortunately they were destroyed in the bombardment affecting
Szombathely, but the archive photos in the museum make it possible to admire their past beauty.
Out of the original altar pictures (I. Dorffmaister, A. Maulbertsch, and A. Spreng) some entirely and some partially were damaged, the latter were managed to be restored. On the two sides of the nave there are 3-3 semi-circularly closing side-chapels. The pictures on the altars here on the right on the northern side: St. Theresa from Lisieux (Masa Feszty), King St. Stephen (I. Dorffmaister), Jesus’ Heart (István Takács). On the left on the southern side: Martyr St. Sebastian, St. John of Nepomucky (both by A. Spreng), St. John the Baptist with Jesus (I. Dorffmaister).
The picture in the side-chapel on the right of the transept depicts St. Martin (A. Maulbertsch), the patron saint of the diocese, who was born in the ancient Savaria in approximately 316 AD. The saint’s relic bones are held in the St Martin herm on the altar.
St.Quirinus is remembered by the side chapel next to the vestry-room (A. Maulbertsch). During the early Christian era St. Quirinus died a martyr in Savaria in about 303.
Four oil pictures of the size of 4 metres times 4 metres ( 13.12 feet) can be seen in the transept and which were painted by Ádám Kisléghi Nagy on the main events of Blessed Virgin Mary’s life.
The main altar picture to be seen today is the Visitation by István Takács. The canon stalls were made in 1807, the Episcopal throne in 1810. The vestry-room opens from the southern transept with the capitular and parochial vestryrooms.
The partially new organ was consecrated in 1999, being 12 metres (39.37 feet) high, it has 4500 pipes and it is equipped by 54 registers and 3 manuals. In the crypt below the church one can find the burial places of the bishops and canons.