Vác Cathedral, Baroque cathedral in Vác, Hungary

Vác Cathedral is a light-beige Baroque church on Konstantin tér, built 1761–1777 to plans by Isidore Canevale. Its west front has two 38-metre square towers, the left clock with Roman numerals, the right with Arabic ones, and a Latin dedication to the Assumption and St Michael above paired columns. Four statues by József Bechert stand on the attic, with a cross at the top; the interior is 60 metres long and holds about 5,000 people.

The diocese was founded in 1004 under Stephen I, and the present cathedral is the fifth church on the site. The first cathedral, built in 1074, was destroyed in the fourteenth century during the Mongol invasions; the last wall remnants collapsed under Ottoman rule. Bishop Károly Eszterházy commissioned Franz Anton Pilgram, but after Migazzi became bishop, Isidore Canevale redesigned the church on foundations laid in 1761. It was consecrated in 1772 and completed in 1777.

The facade inscription D.O.M. stands for Deo Optimo Maximo, though visitors often mistake it for a reference to the cathedral's status as a bishop's seat. The high altarpiece by Franz Anton Maulbertsch, showing the Visitation, was covered with an oil painting for about 170 years until Bishop Pétery had it uncovered in the 1940s. The sanctuary rail partly reuses original pieces from the Renaissance cathedral destroyed in Ottoman times.

The cathedral stands on Konstantin tér, its twin-towered west front facing the Danube; the interior runs 60 m long and seats 278, with the organ loft above the entrance on six Corinthian columns. The great bell in the right-hand tower weighs 3738 kg and had to be hoisted in through a widened window, whose chiselled edges are still visible. The crypt below holds bishops, canons and laypeople in three groups.

The great bell in the south tower weighs 3,738 kg and was cast by László Szlezák in Budapest in 1936, replacing a 4,377 kg bell taken away in the First World War. Because the tower windows are 189 cm wide and the bell's lower diameter is 191 cm, it could only be hoisted in by chiselling the openings wider; the marks are still visible.