Szársomlyó

Szársomlyó (also known as Harsányi or Nagyharsányi Hill, colloquially Ördögszántotta Hill, in old times Várhögy or Sár-Sumlu) is the highest, 442‑metre mountain mass of the Villány Mountains, which stands alone in its surroundings in the southern part of Baranya County. It is the southernmost mountain of our country.

At its foot are located the settlements Kisharsány, Nagyharsány and Villány; its road access is provided by road 5701, which touches all three.

It is a limestone island‑mountain, 3.2 km long and 1.7 km wide, resembling a sugar‑glass from the west, not connected with the central mountain range nor with the Mecsek. It rises about 300 metres above the Drava plain. The prefix “szár”, meaning “bare, bald”, entered its name because its steep, rocky southern slope could not become forested. The side sloping toward Nagyharsány is cut by huge furrows (hence the name Ördögszántotta, which is also linked to a legend, see below). These surface features may have formed because large areas of the marine‑origin limestone that makes up the mountain are not covered by fertile soil.

In his 1851 work *Magyarország Geographiai szótára*, Fényes Elek wrote: “On the top of the high, sugar‑glass‑shaped mountain rising above the settlement, one can see the ruins of an old castle, from which a lofty view opens toward Bács, Baranya, and the Verőcze region.” Today only the foundations of two castle walls are visible among the ruins.

Geology

The sediment that formed the mountain’s limestone was deposited in a sea that oscillated here during the Mesozoic. The sedimentary material is not continuous in time, because the area rose above sea level several times, most recently in the Late Cretaceous. From then on it was no longer submerged—although in the Pliocene the Pannonian Sea surrounded it—and it began to erode.

Stone Mining

At the Siklós side of Szársomlyó a stone quarry was opened in 1903. From 1910 the nearby large cement plant in Beremend was supplied with industrial quantities of limestone from here. It is the largest stone quarry in Southern Transdanubia, whose 30–40 metre‑high rock faces provide a striking backdrop to the village of Nagyharsány. Between 1936 and 1944 some bauxite was also found in the “unfortunate” mountain’s core, but its extraction was halted because it was uneconomical and due to the war. The abandoned pits’ barren slopes on the southern side are still visible today, and bats inhabit the pits. Limestone mining continues, but the Danube–Drava National Park Directorate is taking serious measures to preserve the landscape’s beauty. Until the mid‑1960s a smaller tsz‑quarry also operated at the eastern end of the mountain. This abandoned quarry now houses the international sculptors’ settlement of Villány (see below).

The crystal cave

On April 7, 1994, a mining explosion brought to the surface the beautiful and rare mineral deposits (including forms of extraction that were first discovered in Hungary here) and the entrance to the Nagyharsányi crystal cave, which in the Hungarian context contains spacious passages. About 1,400 metres of length have been explored, of which the first hundred metres are developed. However, entry is permitted only in exceptional cases by the national park board for experts, for research purposes. In the western end of the cave system vertebrate fossils were found, among which remains of a Pleistocene-era ground squirrel identified as belonging to Dénes Jánossy were identified.

The sculpture park

In the abandoned eastern tsz stone mine of Szársomlyó, an international artist settlement was established in 1967–68, called the Villány Sculpture Park. (Administratively at that time the mine – like Nagyharsány – belonged to Villány.) Another name is the Szársomlyó Sculpture Park, but nowadays the name Nagyharsányi Sculpture Park is more commonly used. Predominantly works carved from local stone or waste stone from the Rózsabánya mine in Sikló are visible there, the works of domestic and foreign artists who worked there periodically. The creator and main organizer of the artist settlement was the sculptor Sándor Rétfalvi. Over the decades, renowned creators contributed to the expansion of the park’s material, including Gyula Bocz, Péter Székely (Pierre Székely), Ferenc Martyn, István Bencsik, János Orosz, Imre Varga, Ilona Keserü, Ferenc Kovács, Károly Ócsai, László Csontos, Ádám Farkas, Tamás Gaál, Sándor Kígyós, Gyula Gulyás, Imre Veszprémi, György Buczkó, István Böszörményi, Ottó Horváth, and among the foreigners Peter Roller, Juraj Gavula, Ruggero Pazzi, Vittorio di Muzio, Kitawaga Gojcsi, Amemija Isszei, Colin Foster, George Apostu and many others. Master’s degree students of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Pécs also work here. The artists receive accommodation and catering in the nearby Gyimóthy villa. In the mine building, a compressor house provides compressed air and industrial electricity for the tools used to work the sculptures.

Climate

The mountain's climate is distinctly Mediterranean. The average annual sunshine duration on Szársomlyó is high, 2000–2100 hours, and the average annual temperature is 11 °C. A Mediterranean feature is also that precipitation distribution has a double maximum: in spring and autumn.

Viticulture, winemaking

Not only does the sunny southern slope of the mountain produce very good wine grapes, but also the surrounding basin. In Villány they produce red wine, on the sides facing Kisharsány and Siklós they mainly produce white wine. The climate and soil of the Szársomlyó area also make it equally suitable for traditional agricultural, arable farming.