“Tuscany of the East Slovakia” – Manor of Péchy in Hermanovce.
The Hermanovce municipality is located in the narrow valley of the Hermanovský brook, 20 km away from the town of Prešov. The town is mentioned in writing for the first time as “Villa Hermani Superior et Inferior”, Hermanovce gradually changed owners. The Péchy family moved to the eastern Kingdom of Hungary (today’s eastern Slovakia) after the Turkish invasions. Their main assets included Pečovská Nová Ves and its surroundings. The story of the Manor of Péchy began sometime around 1772, when the yeomen and patrons were Ladislaus Péchy, the royal secret counsellor during the reign of Emperor Maria Theresa, and his wife Žofia Úsz. The story of Franciscus Péchy, who was the imperial commissioner and ruled over the surrounding villages, is recorded as a story of great love. When Franciscus proposed to the daughter of a yeoman from Bardejov, Barbora Bereczka, he was told that she would like to come, but he was supposed to build her a new manor house on the hill. The request of the beloved Barbora was fulfilled and she repaid her husband and the village by building a beautiful church opposite to the manor house with the main altar from the workshop of Master Paul. In 1818, she also had a mausoleum built on six stone pillars with a stone dome in front of the main entrance to the church. Both the coffins of Franciscus Péchy and his wife Barbora are still located under the mausoleum. The manor house used to include a three-hectare English garden, a court, a distillery, vast forests and arable land. The owner had a Hunting House, a tennis court and a grand natural swimming pool built for family friends on the premises. Until 1948, his wife Klára, neé Bánó de Topolycska et Kükemezö, still lived in a part of the manor with her daughter Klára. Their houses served as a school, and over the years they became ruins. In the 1990s, the descendants regained part of their original ownership and determined it as their life’s mission to save and preserve the family heritage – the park, houses and forests. Today, the manor house is in the hands of the successors of the Péchy family, Klára Szakall von Losoncz , who is the granddaughter of the last owners and who contributed to the current state of the manor house.
