The Calvinist Church –Velika Bihany

The first known owners of the settlement were the Bégányi family, who were mentioned for the first time in documents in 1319, but this reference to them is somewhat uncertain. According to a source stemming from 1552, the village was largely destroyed. In fact, the Crimean Tatars pillaged the settlement in 1567.

The priest serving in this church dedicated to Saint George was mentioned for the first time in 1333. Later, in 1578, the church belonged already to the Calvinists.
The Gothic church in Nagybégány/Velika Bihany suffered damages on several occasions. The Simai Mező family had it rebuilt in 1768, when a painted wooden ceiling was added to the nave.
The sanctuary of this oriented church ends in a straight line. Its sacristy, which stood on the northern side, was demolished and rebuilt with a vaulted ceiling based on segmented arches. This type of arch spans the southern gate as well. The church tower was built in 1854. The present external frontispiece preserved only a few of the medieval details. Its western gate encased by a stone frame is now at the bottom of the tower.

On the inside of the church, the chancel arch shaped as a lancet arch has been preserved. The sanctuary was covered with a vaulted ceiling in two stages. The initial vaulted ceiling must have been destroyed at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries. The narrow ribs of the second, and extant, vaulted ceiling end in a disc-shaped cornerstone. The eastern wall of the sanctuary still preserves the tabernacle spanned by a lancet arch.

Of special worth is a mural painting inside the church. József Lángi began exploring this work of art in 2000. The full size of the picture is 167 x 210 cm. A zigzag pattern framing surrounds the main field depicting Saint Helena with the cross. Two smaller figures also appear in the picture: one of them is holding the vertical beam of the cross, while the other one sticks his spade into the ground next to the bottom of the cross. Under her crown, Saint Helena wears a coronet and a veil reaching to her shoulders, her cloak is ornamented with a miniver trim.
The painting work was done during the second period of (re)building the church, that is, somewhere between 1410 and 1420. The continuation of explorations targeting the murals in the church opens the perspective of making important discoveries from the point of view of science and tourism alike.