History of Banska Bystrica

benefits including medical care for its 1,000 employees, Ungarischer Handel was one of the largest and most modern early-capitalist firms. An early record of the miners' industrial action is from 1526 when the City Council needed to take refuge within the confines of City Castle. The Ottoman Empire's thrust northwards led the magistrate to improve the city's fortifications with modern stone walls in 1589, but the Turks never occupied the region. Banska Bystrica became one of the foremost centers of the Protestant Reformation in the Kingdom of Hungary in the 16th century. Later on, the city had to fight for its religious freedom guaranteed by the Royal Charter against the ruling dynasty of the Austrian Roman Catholic Habsburgs, for its physical independence against the Ottoman Turks and for its self-governance against the Kingdom of Hungary's powerful magnates. In 1620 Prince Gabriel Bethlen of Transylvania, a Protestant, was elected King of Hungary by the Diet meeting at Banska Bystrica

The village of Radvaň, now a borough of Banska Bystrica, was granted the economically important right to hold annual fairs (Radvansky jarmok) in 1655. The fair was transferred to Banská Bystrica's main square in the 20th century. The copper deposits had been all but depleted by the 18th century, but new industries, such as timber, paper, and textiles, developed. In 1766 the city became the capital of Zvolen County when Banska Bystrica also became the seat of a Roman Catholic bishopric (1776) and of several institutions of higher education. Public services expanded in the 19th century with the foundation of a permanent municipal hospital (1820), a municipal theater (1841), and a municipal museum (1889). The railway reached the town from Zvolen in 1873