Szentes was a county town at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1930, more than one third of its population lived in homestead. The homesteads of Szentes were open-air type farming estates.

The monastery of the Benedictines with the church attached to it was one of the most significant buildings of Hungary in the Middle Ages. The rulers of the world, the members of the Bór-Kalán clan, bare important offices at the royal court and the temple. The monastery was destroyed at the time of the Turkish expansion, but the ruins of the church still stood in the 19th century.