Szerbtemplom

Balassagyarmat's former Serbian Orthodox church traces back to a community of Greek and Serbian merchants who settled in the town during the eighteenth century and whose congregation became the only Orthodox mother parish in historic Nógrád county. Records of the community date to 1737, and county authorities approved construction of a church in 1785. Its elaborate carved altar screen was commissioned from Miklós Jankovics, among the leading late-Baroque wood sculptors working in Hungary, with painted panels supplied by Mihajlo Zsivkovics. As the Orthodox congregation dwindled, the original church was pulled down in 1908 and replaced by a smaller chapel alongside an apartment building; weekly services continued there until 1970, after which the property was sold. The surviving altar screen was dismantled and relocated to Szentendre in the early 1970s. Since the mid-1980s the building has operated as an art gallery, preserving the site's religious and artistic history for visitors to Balassagyarmat.