St. Bartholomew's Religious Tourism Visitor Center and Treasury

The treasury and visitor center at Saint Bartholomew's Church in Gyöngyös preserves one of Hungary's most important collections of ecclesiastical art and liturgical objects, ranked second in significance only to the treasury of Esztergom. It was assembled largely through the efforts of the Franciscan friar Pál Guba (1861–1952), hidden for safety during the Second World War, and rediscovered only in the 1960s; following renovation work carried out between 2009 and 2014, it is now displayed in the church's former Crown building. The church itself has a long and turbulent history: a place of worship stood on the site by the early fourteenth century, was burned in 1320, rebuilt in Gothic form in the fifteenth century, repeatedly damaged during the Ottoman period, destroyed again in 1741, and rebuilt as the Baroque church seen largely today between 1746 and 1756; a further fire in 1917 and reconstruction under architect Virgil Nagy in 1922 shaped its present twin-towered silhouette. In 2016 the Hungarian Museum Association named the visitor center and treasury Museum of the Year.