A decoratively bordered postcard looks past the Catholic parish church down a busy commercial street lined with awnings and shopfronts, with a tram car standing on the tracks near the church. The caption beneath names the church in German and gives the town's name in Hungarian, German and a third phonetic spelling, reflecting the multilingual city the card was sold in.
About this place
The Roman Catholic parish church of the Name of Mary faces the Town Hall across Trg slobode and is the largest church in Novi Sad. It replaced an eighteenth century church on the same site that was set alight and lost its tower in the bombardment of 12 June 1849; the repairs left the townspeople dissatisfied, and in 1891 the city resolved to pull the old building down and start again. György Molnár drew the plans in 1892 and refused any fee, and the contractors Stefan Gusek and Karl Lerer finished the structure in November 1893 under his supervision, the gilded cross going up on the tower in October 1894. It is a three-aisled neo-Gothic basilica of yellow facing brick, 52 metres long and 25 wide, with a tower of 72 metres, stained glass from Pest workshops and a roof of Zsolnay tiles laid after a fire gutted it in 1904. Novi Sad calls it the cathedral, which it is not: the see of the diocese is at Subotica. In gratitude for the free design the parish set a bust of Molnár in a niche below the choir.
On the card
Újvidék. Róm. kat. templom
- Date
- 1896–1918
- Coordinates
- 45.25563, 19.84571
- Source
- National Széchényi Library - postcards
- Credit
- National Széchényi Library
- Licence
- Public domain
- Size
- 966 × 1521 px
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