Short description:

Tanya is a unique, rural type of settlement typical of Alföld (the Great Hungarian Plain), an inhabited place outside city limits. Szállás (lodging in English), the older name of tanya meant the scattered and isolated farmsteads on the Great Hungarian Plain that mainly served as the centre of farming and provided winter shelter for livestock. Agriculture had a fundamental role in the development of the tanya. As an economic unit outside city limits, tanya became a settlement outside of but strongly connected to a nearby town and serving only as temporary residence in the 14-15th centuries as a characteristic feature of country towns. The great economic boom of tanyas took place around the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, in an era mainly free of the limitations of feudalism.