If you stand over a map of Europe and try to pinpoint the centre of Western Christian art exactly, you would probably be off target.
Mainly because you could stick a pin anywhere from Paris through Vienna to the Italian boot, and you wouldn’t be entirely right; however, you wouldn’t be far off either. After all, culture flourished in all these places in the 18th and 19th centuries. This is where the artistic masterpieces we know today as European art were created – those we look at and know ourselves. Those who have visited each of these places and seen such historical works there are certainly lucky, but those art lovers visiting Veszprém will not be disappointed either. One of the most impressive buildings in the castle, the Archbishop’s Palace, houses art from these three places.
Not to mention the fact that the building is home to the church library and archives, comprising 65,000 items, as well as the pearl inlaid seating made in Paris for Queen Elisabeth’s reception and the Empire-style seating made in Paris for Franz Joseph’s reception. In a nutshell, the Archbishop’s Palace embodies in one building everything that has made European Christian culture so great in past centuries. This may bring us closer to solving the dilemma. If you were to pinpoint the centre of European Christian culture, you would not go far wrong if you stuck that particular pin in Veszprém.
