Vas is the name of an administrative county in present Hungary, and also in the former Kingdom of Hungary.

Vas is also the name of a historic administrative county (comitatus) of the Kingdom of Hungary. Its territory is presently in western Hungary, eastern Austria and eastern Slovenia. The capital of the county was Szombathely. Vas county arose as one of the first comitatus of the Kingdom of Hungary.

In 1918 (confirmed by the Treaty of Trianon 1920), the western part of the county became part of the new Austrian land Burgenland, and a smaller part in the southwest, known as Vendvidék became part of the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia). In the Vendvidék in 1919 was founded an unrecognized state the Prekmurje Republic, alike in Burgenlad the Lajtabánság. The remainder stayed in Hungary, as the present Hungarian county Vas. A small part of former Sopron county went to Vas county. Some villages north of Zalaegerszeg went to Zala county, and a small region west of Pápa went to Veszprém county. Since 1991, when Slovenia became independent from Yugoslavia, the Yugoslavian part of former Vas county (around Murska Sobota) is part of Slovenia. The Vas county is home to a small Slovene minority, which lives in the area between the town of Szentgotthard and the Slovenian border (see Hungarian Slovenes).

About this county you can find here some more interesting information: http://www.vasmegye.hu/vascounty/

Vas county, the western gate of Hungary, has been the facilitator and welcoming party of and between the east and the west, the north and the south. The Pannonian region, as a characteristic land and the home of the Panonnian way of thinking, has always been striving to play a cultural image of the region near and far.

Our thousand-of-years-old built heritage bears traces of our hard working ancestors. Archeologists have uncovered buildings from a settlement around the Neolithic period in the village of Sé. During excavations at the Saind Vid church in the village of Velem, houses and adjacent farm buildings with ridge-poles from the Bronze and Iron Ages were found. The administrative, commercial and religious centre, founded under the name of Savaria, now our county seat, Szombathely, shows the lasting work of master architects of the Amber road, leading through the Roman province of Pannonia.

The churches in the villages of Csempeszkopács, Velemér and Őriszentpéter bear traces of Árpád-age (1000-1301 a.D). Those visiting the village of Ják can witness a true architectural beauty, as the Saint George church is one of the most important building of the early Middle Ages and the Hungarian sacred architecture.