Eger lies where the Bükk and the Mátra Hills meet. This one thousand years old Episcopal and archiepiscopal seat is one of the most beautiful Baroque cities in Hungary. Its inhabitants are proud of its glorious past and priceless heritage of monuments. In 1552 a handful of Hungarian warriors held the town's fort against a Turkish force of forty thousand. The Prison Museum, the Waxworks Museum, the Mint evoke historical memories, while the gallery exhibits paintings by European masters from the 15th to the 19th centuries.

The Classicist Cathedral at Esterházy tér is Hungary's second largest church with the largest organ in the country. Opposite, the late Baroque Lyceum - today a teachers' college - with ornate carvings and a frescoed ceiling houses the Diocesan Library, a collection of 150,000 volumes including the first book printed in Hungary in 1473. In the tower the country's first astronomical museum called the Spekula Observatory, considered to be 'state of the art' in 1776, can be visited. The most valuable instrument of the observatory is a periscope from 1779, projecting a live picture of the city onto a white table in a darkened room. The Archiepiscopal Palace houses the Archiepiscopal Collection presenting the lives and work of Eger's archbishops and bishops. The most valued treasure of the exhibition is a chasuble made from the coronation cloak of the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa.

Splendid edifices along Kossuth Lajos utca include Baroque and Rococo city palaces: the junior provost's palace, the senior provost's palace, the house of Canon Wagner, the Baroque Franciscan church and monastery and the Buttler's House, one of the oldest buildings in the city. The exquisite wrought-iron gates of the City Hall are a masterpiece by the blacksmith Henrik Fazzola.

Rising 40 m above the city is a Turkish minaret, Europe's most northerly Turkish building, with 93 stairs. The Turkish bath is a reminder of the bathing culture that evolved during the Turkish rule in Hungary. The Palóc Folklore Exhibition provides an ethnographic overview of the Eger region.

The town also offers a wide selection of full-bodied red wines. In the century-old wine-tasting cellars honeycombing the volcanic soils of the hillsides of Szépasszony völgye (Pretty Lady Valley) you can taste the famed Bull's Blood.