The Calvinist Rome — Hungary's great eastern city
Debrecen is Hungary's second-largest city and the spiritual capital of Hungarian Protestantism — the Great Reformed Church on Kossuth Square, with its twin towers and 9,000-pipe organ, is the largest Protestant church in Hungary and the place where Lajos Kossuth proclaimed Hungarian independence from the Habsburgs in 1849. The city sits on the edge of the Hortobágy National Park, Europe's largest natural grassland, where Hungarian grey cattle and Puli sheepdogs still graze under the open sky.
Debrecen emerged as the most important Protestant city in Hungary during the Reformation, earning the nickname 'Calvinist Rome.' It served as Hungary's capital three times — during the 1848–49 revolution, in 1944 when the provisional government was established here after Nazi occupation of Budapest, and briefly in 1849 when Kossuth declared independence from the Habsburgs in the Great Church. The city's college, founded 1538, was central to preserving Hungarian culture and language through Habsburg and Ottoman pressures.