The city of Sárvár is particularly rich in history dating back to Roman times, as well as in its tourist significance.

The area has been inhabited since Neolithic times thanks to its favourable natural and geographical conditions. The Romans founded a settlement nearby called Bassiana. The town takes its name from its Árpád castle, surrounded by water and marshes. Later, with minor interruptions, the Kanizsa family owned the castle and the settlement. After the marriage of Tamás Nádasdy and Orsolya Kanizsai, Sárvár and the other Kanizsai estates became the property of the Nádasdy family, which was attacked by the Turks several times. Under the leadership of Ferenc Nádasdy, the population, together with the people of the area who had fled to the area, successfully repelled the enemy. The siege of 15 August 1532 was the most serious of the Turkish attacks, when about 200 defenders died heroically.

After the siege, Tamás Nádasdy, a humanist, established one of the cultural centres of the decaying country in Sárvár.In 1534 he founded a school and a printing press. It was during the Nádasdy family’s possession of the castle for nearly a century and a half that it acquired the late Renaissance appearance that is still recognisable today. To ward off Turkish attack, the castle’s pentagonal defence system with bastions can still be admired today. The age of the Nádasdy family still defines the structure of the town today. Settlements such as Friday Village, Thirteen Towns and the Mountaineer’s Village began to be settled at this time.
In the 1970s, Sárvár was enriched with new factories, the lake and the park forest, as well as schools. After the renovation of the Nádasdy Castle in 1978, it became, together with the museum, the centre of the town’s public culture.

In the first decade of the 21st century, the development of the municipality was determined by the boom in health tourism, in addition to industrial capacity. In 1961, oil explorers discovered medicinal water, and the first thermal baths were built in 1968 to exploit it. The investment paved the way for a series of huge developments: in 2004, Sárvár became a member of the European Association of Royal Spa Towns, and the four-star Bassiana Hotel opened. On 19 October 2012, Sárvár was awarded the spa certificate at a ceremony to mark its accession to the European Spa Association. After a year-long process, two areas of the town were awarded the spa status, “Sárvár – Spa Gardens” and “Sárvár – Arboretum”.
Sárvár’s economic life, its leading role in tourism and its rich cultural life and offer have made it one of the most popular settlements in Hungary, and one of the TOP10 settlements in the country in terms of the number of overnight stays.