Monument to the Peace Treaty of Zsitvatorok

The Peace of Zsitvatorok is the peace treaty that ended the fifteen-year war. The peace was concluded through the mediation of István Bocskai by Rudolf II (1552-1612), Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary and Bohemia, and Sultan Ahmed I of the Ottoman Empire, on November 11, 1606, at the mouth of the Zsitva River. ; The monument: a three-legged steel arch rises above a two-meter-diameter round table carved from limestone. The six-meter-high bridge structure holds six bells, the bells of peace. The three branches of the structure symbolize the two warring parties and the person mediating the peace. The closing element is a bright crescent moon reminiscent of Turkish times. The monument was erected on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the peace treaty at the place where the old oak tree under which the peace was concluded still stood in the 1940s. According to oral tradition, the signing took place in Dunaalmás, opposite, in a Turkish tent set up among the ruins of a monastery. Today, neither the monastery nor the oak tree is there, and the Zsitva does not flow into the Danube, as the Zsitva River, 20 kilometers away, was diverted into the Nitra River due to river regulation works.