Esztergom is a city located west of the Hungarian capital of Budapest on the Slovakian border where, situated on a huge rock, there is a Basilica and castle.

This, ‘Hungarian Rome’, lives completely in the shadow of the Catholic Church as the centre of Hungary and residence of the country’s Primas, an area that has been inhabited since the Prehistoric Stone Age.

On April 23, 1822, the foundation stone of the Basilica was added to earlier church buildings after Vienna’s Imperial Court helped return the city’s archbishops back to power.

At its consecration on August 31, 1856, Franz Liszt performed a specially-composed festive mass in the presence of Emperor Franz Joseph. Everything is based upon its dimensions: a hundred and seven metres to the dome, a hundred and eighteen feet long and forty eight feet wide.

It can accommodate a congregation of eight thousand and even today each detail of this monumental building radiates both awe and pomp.

The former ecclesiastical and secular centre of Stephan’s Empire has indeed survived the ravages of time.