History
The first mention of the parish church in Trnava comes from the second half of the 11th century. It was erected in the Romanesque style, on the market square in the eastern part of the town and consecrated under the name of Saint Nicholas, patron of merchants. The present, Gothic church was built between 1380 – 1421. In later centuries it underwent several modifications. In the years 1618-1630 cardinal Peter Pázmány added Baroque side chapels, and most of the equipment was replaced. The culmination of towers was also changed. When at the 16th century, successive areas of Hungary were conquered by the Turks, the church became in 1543 the Hungarian cathedral and seat of the archbishop of Esztergom. It served this function until 1820. Again church was the cathedral, this time of the Bratislava-Trnava archbishopric, from 1918 to 1977.
Architecture
The church is a brick, three-aisle building, in the form of a basilica, that is, it has windows of the central nave, over the side aisles. On the eastern side it is ended with a polygonal chancel with high buttresses reaching the roof. Between them there are long, ogival windows with stone tracery preserved to this day. The west side is crowned by two massive towers, which at the level of the fourth and fifth floors are transformed into polygons. Between them, the western facade is decorated with a large Gothic window, the smaller ogival windows crowned with trefoils are placed between the buttresses. The temple is 60 meters long, 31 meters wide, and the central nave is 18 meters high. Inside the central nave and aisles there are cross-rib vaults.
bibliography:
Website wikipedia.org, Bazilika svätého Mikuláša (Trnava).