On the night of 12 March 1879 the Tisza broke through the dykes north of Szeged, and by morning the city was gone. Of some 5,700 houses, fewer than 300 were left standing, and around 150 people were dead. Emperor Franz Joseph came five days later and is remembered for promising that "Szeged will be more beautiful than it was", and for once the promise was kept. Money came from around the world, the city was rebuilt on a new plan of ring roads and avenues (the sections of the great ring are named after the capitals that sent help: Vienna, London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Rome and Moscow), and the next thirty years filled it with Art Nouveau palaces, a cathedral vowed in thanks and a synagogue famous across Europe.
Today it's Hungary's third-largest city, nicknamed the City of Sunshine, a university town of students and bicycles on the flat plain just above the Serbian border. It's also the paprika capital of Hungary, the home of Pick salami and of szegedi halászlé, a fish soup so red with paprika that it glows. Five days is enough to slow down to its pace, eat well and take the train across the border.
Day one is Dóm tér and the old heart by the river, day two the Art Nouveau city and the Anna Bath, day three paprika, vitamin C and the gardens of Újszeged, day four a day trip by train to Subotica and Lake Palić in Serbia, and day five the Feszty Panorama at Ópusztaszer and a last fish soup on the Tisza. For the rest of the country, see Hungary and the guides to Budapest and Pécs.
Every stop from the plan below, colored by day. Pick a day to see its route.
The cathedral the city vowed after the flood, its tower and the oldest building in Szeged, a Serbian church and the musical clock, then the Móra Museum and the old castle by the Tisza at sunset.
The New Synagogue, the green palace of the Reök, coffee where Kossuth gave his last speech, the Art Nouveau streets and an evening at the Anna Bath.
A Gothic church that survived the flood, a market full of red paprika, the Nobel Prize that came out of a pepper, a botanical garden across the river and a long fish soup dinner on the Tisza.
A train across the border to the most Art Nouveau town in Serbia: its City Hall and synagogue, Raichle's own palace and an afternoon at the lake.
A 120-meter painting of the Magyar conquest at Ópusztaszer, lunch on the plain, a slow afternoon at a thermal spa and a farewell dinner.
Today is the old center, all within a ten-minute walk. Climb the cathedral tower in the morning, be on Dóm tér at 12:15 for the musical clock, see the Castle Museum before it closes at 6 and end on the riverbank at sunset (around 4:30pm after the clocks change in late October). The cathedral visitor center and tower are closed on Mondays, and the synagogue on Mondays and Saturdays, so start on a Tuesday.
After the flood, the people of Szeged vowed to build a church to the Virgin Mary if the city rose again. It took until 1913 to start and 1930 to finish, and the result is the Votive Church, a huge red-brick neo-Romanesque cathedral with two towers over 80 meters high, the city's landmark from anywhere on the plain. Inside, the organ has more than 9,000 pipes, one of the biggest in Europe, and on the vault above the main altar is the "Slipper Madonna", a painting of Mary in a Hungarian shepherd's cloak and the red slippers Szeged was famous for.
Climb the tower: 302 steps to a platform 46 meters up, with all of Szeged spread around you and the Tisza bending past. The visitor center also runs guided dome walks and visits to the Dömötör Tower, and has a church history exhibition.
The square around the cathedral was laid out in the 1920s and 30s, and its arcades form the National Pantheon, some 100 statues and reliefs of famous Hungarians, from kings to scientists. In front of the cathedral stands the Dömötör Tower, the oldest building in Szeged, on 11th-century foundations, part of an older church that stood on the Palánk, the old core of the town and one of the few areas the 1879 flood didn't cover. Inside, the baptistery has frescoes by Vilmos Aba-Novák, shown on guided visits from the visitor center.
Beside the square, Heroes' Gate, a 1930s memorial arch, has frescoes by Vilmos Aba-Novák. At 12:15 (and again at 17:45), the musical clock on the university building opposite opens its doors and a little procession of wooden professors and students passes to an old student song. It has been doing so since 1936, except during the summer festival.
Just behind the square is a reminder that Szeged was never only Hungarian. Serbs have lived here for more than five centuries, and their baroque church of St. Nicholas, begun in 1778, hides one of the finest iconostases in Hungary, gilded and carved in a rococo style, with 74 icons. Visits are by appointment only, by phone; otherwise enjoy the tower and the churchyard from outside.
Walk five minutes north to Széchenyi tér, a huge square of plane trees with the yellow City Hall and two bronze statues by the fountain: the "destructive" and the "constructive" Tisza, the river that ruined the city and the river that feeds it. Have lunch in one of the restaurants nearby: a gulyás, Hungary's national dish, which here is a beef and paprika soup, or székelygulyás, pork and sauerkraut with sour cream.
The City Hall was rebuilt after the flood by Ödön Lechner, later the father of Hungarian Art Nouveau, and Gyula Pártos, with a covered "Bridge of Sighs" to the building next door, added for Franz Joseph's visit in 1883. Inside visits are hour-long guided tours in Hungarian on a few days a week, booked at Tourinform on the square.
On the riverbank stands the Móra Ferenc Museum, a columned palace from 1896 named after the writer and archaeologist who directed it. It has a fine collection of Hungarian painting, a folk-life section on the people of the plain, and a hoard of Hun gold from Nagyszéksós that Móra dug up himself in 1926, more than a kilogram of it. Rooftop terraces, for a small extra fee, look over the Tisza.
A few steps north, a single wing is all that's left of Szeged's medieval castle, the biggest brick castle on the Great Plain. After the flood Franz Joseph handed it to the city, and the city pulled it down and used the bricks to rebuild. What's left houses the Castle Museum, open until 6pm, with a lapidarium of carved stones and rooms on the flood and on the Szeged witch trials of 1728, the largest in Hungary.
Then walk the riverside promenade, where the Tisza runs wide and brown past the city. In the evening light, with the students out and the bridge lit, it looks harmless. Flood marks on buildings around the city, like the Alsóváros church you'll see on day three, show how high the water came.
Today is the city the flood made possible, in a loop from west to northeast. Start at the synagogue when it opens at 9, because it closes at 4pm; the Reök opens at 10. The synagogue is closed on Mondays and Saturdays and the Reök on Mondays, so keep this day to Tuesday to Friday.
The New Synagogue, built in 1900-03 by Lipót Baumhorn, is the finest building in the city. The outside mixes Moorish and Art Nouveau; inside, the dome is painted blue with stars and flowers, the plants of the Bible, and the stained glass is by Manó Róth. The plan for the decoration came from the city's chief rabbi Immánuel Löw, a scholar of the plants of the Bible. In 1944, at 90, he was taken to the ghetto and put on a deportation train with most of Szeged's Jews; he was taken off in Budapest and died there in hospital that July.
Ten minutes south is the Reök Palace, built in 1907 by Ede Magyar for the engineer Iván Reök, a corner building whose walls flow like water, with lilies and seaweed in pale green and lilac. It's now an arts center with changing exhibitions; even if the show doesn't interest you, the stairwell is worth the small fee. Closed on Mondays.
Ede Magyar was the great architect of Szeged's Art Nouveau, and his Ungár-Mayer House is right around the corner on Kárász utca, the pedestrian street that leads to the next stop.
Walk up Kárász utca to Klauzál tér, the city's living room. In July 1849, in the last weeks of the war of independence, Lajos Kossuth gave his last speech on Hungarian soil from the balcony of the Kárász House here before he went into exile. Today it's surrounded by café terraces.
Sit down at Virág Cukrászda, the city's best-known pastry shop, for a coffee and a slice of Dobos torta, the layered cake with a caramel top, or one of their strudels.
From Klauzál tér, walk northeast to the National Theatre of 1883, by the Viennese theater architects Fellner and Helmer, and the Deutsch Palace next to it, with a facade by Ödön Lechner and Zsolnay ceramic flowers. Then follow Tisza Lajos körút to the Gróf Palace of 1913, with its two towers and three different facades, by Ferenc Raichle, an architect from Subotica you'll meet again on day four.
Szeged's Art Nouveau is less famous than Budapest's, and you can see the best of it in an afternoon. Tourinform on Széchenyi tér has a free map of the route and runs guided walks, and the theater is worth an evening if something's on.
Ten minutes on, on Szent István tér, stands the water tower everyone calls the Old Lady, built in 1904 and the first reinforced-concrete water tower in Hungary, with Art Nouveau decoration on its sides. It still works. It opens to visitors only on the first Saturday of the month from May to September, but it's worth a look from the park below.
The Anna Bath opened in 1896 as a city bath, in a neo-Renaissance building with Turkish-style touches. In 1927 a well was drilled next to it to almost a kilometer down, hot water came up at about 52°C, and the bath became a thermal and later a medicinal bath. The well was named after Anna, the daughter of the man who first bottled its water. Soak under the dome, then step outside to the Anna Well on the corner, where locals fill bottles with the same warm water for free.
After the bath, go out with the students. Szeged is a university town, and the bars around Dugonics tér and the JATE club, running since the 1970s, are where the night happens.
Today mixes the city's two red obsessions, paprika and fish soup. Start at the market early (the fish and meat halls close around 1pm), go south to Alsóváros by tram or bus, then come back through the center and cross to Újszeged for the afternoon. Dinner is upriver on the Szeged side.
Szeged and Kalocsa have argued for a century over who makes the best Hungarian paprika, and both are on the list of Hungarikums, the national treasures. Come in September or October and you'll see strings of red peppers drying everywhere; the rest of the year, buy it ground at Mars tér, the city's main market. Ask for édes (sweet), csípős (hot) or különleges (special, the finest grind), and take a bag home.
The market is also the place for a lángos, the deep-fried flatbread with sour cream and cheese, and for Pick salami, made in Szeged since the 1860s.
Take a tram or bus south to Alsóváros, the "lower town", where farmers and paprika growers lived. Its Franciscan church, consecrated in 1503, is one of the few Gothic buildings left on the Great Plain, and it survived both the Ottomans and the flood; a flood mark shows how high the water came. Inside are a Black Madonna and a baroque high altar. Franciscan friars still live in the friary next door.
Back in the center, under the arcades on the south side of Dóm tér, a plaque and bust mark the institute where Albert Szent-Györgyi worked in the 1930s. In 1932 he and his colleague Joseph Svirbely showed that hexuronic acid, a substance he had isolated years before, was vitamin C. Then he found that the paprika of Szeged was full of it, and the kilograms he extracted let chemists work out its structure. In 1937 he won the Nobel Prize, the only Hungarian science Nobel for work done in Hungary. His walking statue stands on the steps of the university's main building on Dugonics tér, and a few minutes away, in the university library on Ady tér, a free exhibition follows another Szeged graduate, Katalin Karikó, from the city to her Nobel Prize in 2023 for the work behind mRNA vaccines, with some of Szent-Györgyi's own lab glass.
The university made history again on 16 October 1956, when students at the Faculty of Arts founded MEFESZ, one of the first independent student organizations in the Soviet bloc. A week later the revolution began in Budapest.
Cross the Belvárosi bridge to Újszeged, the quieter east bank, and take a bus or walk 25 minutes to the university's botanical garden (Füvészkert), founded in 1922. In July and August its pond holds the largest outdoor stand of Indian lotus in Central Europe; the rest of the year it's a calm, green place with old trees and greenhouses of tropical plants.
From May to September, Partfürdő by the bridge is the city's beach, with swimming in the Tisza.
For dinner, take a taxi 10 minutes upriver to the old fish taverns on the Felső Tisza-part. Szegedi halászlé is made from several kinds of river fish, carp and catfish above all, boiled down and strained into a smooth, deep red broth, with chunks of fish added at the end. Unlike the Baja version on the Danube, it never comes with pasta. Eat it with white bread and a fresh hot pepper, and then decide whether you have room for the catfish stew.
Kiskőrössy Halászcsárda, on the dyke by the river, is the most famous, and Öreg Kőrössy a few steps away is the older of the two family taverns.
Subotica (Szabadka in Hungarian) is a Hungarian-Serbian town just over the border, built in the same years and by some of the same architects as Szeged. Trains between the two reopened in late 2023 after years without service. There are six a day each way, taking about an hour and 20 minutes with the border check, for about 5 EUR; the 9:04 from Szeged gets you there at 10:24. Bring your passport, and some Serbian dinars or a card.
From the station, walk ten minutes to the City Hall, built in 1908-12 by the Budapest architects Marcell Komor and Dezső Jakab: a huge Art Nouveau building with a 76-meter tower, colorful Zsolnay tiles and hearts and tulips from Hungarian folk art everywhere. The ceremonial hall has stained-glass windows by Sándor Nagy, and a viewing deck in the tower sits 45 meters up. Guided tours usually run around noon on weekdays, and a restoration program has been announced, so check with the tourist office in the building before you plan around it.
Komor and Jakab also built Subotica's synagogue in 1902, one of the great Art Nouveau buildings of Europe, restored and reopened in 2018. Ten minutes away, by the station, is the Raichle Palace of 1904, which Ferenc Raichle built for himself, a riot of curves, hearts and colored tiles. A few years later, in debt, he left for Szeged, where you saw his Gróf Palace on day two. It's now the Contemporary Gallery, open Tuesday to Saturday.
Have lunch on the pedestrian street around the City Hall, where the menu is half Hungarian, half Serbian: halászlé or paprikaš next to ćevapi and pljeskavica. It's a good place to see how a border town eats.
City bus 6 runs every 20-30 minutes from Subotica to Palić, 8 km east, a lake resort that was Subotica's spa in the Austro-Hungarian years. The architects from Budapest left it a set of Art Nouveau buildings in the same style: the water tower at the entrance, the Grand Terrace, the Music Pavilion with its Zsolnay vases and the wooden pavilion of the Women's Beach, built on stilts over the water. Walk around the lake, and taste the wines of the area at one of the wineries nearby.
The train back to Szeged stops at Palić station, a few minutes from the water tower, at about 4:50pm and 7:50pm, and reaches Szeged an hour later. The border is an outer border of the European Union and the Schengen area, so allow time for passport checks (non-EU visitors are registered in the new Entry/Exit System), and keep to the allowance of 40 cigarettes and the limits on alcohol.
The last morning is out on the plain. Ópusztaszer is 30 km north, half an hour by car or 50 minutes by bus from the bus station on Mars tér; on a Saturday, the 8:30 gets you there for the opening and the 12:18 brings you back in time for a late lunch, or take the 10:30 and 15:01 and eat at Ópusztaszer. It's closed on Mondays and from December to early February. Back in Szeged, the afternoon is for the baths and the evening for one more paprika dinner.
The Ópusztaszer National Heritage Park stands where, according to a medieval chronicle, the Magyar chieftains held their first assembly after they arrived around 896. Historians treat the story as tradition rather than fact, but the park is a national shrine anyway.
Its centerpiece is the Feszty Panorama, a circular painting about 120 meters long and 15 meters high, painted by Árpád Feszty and his helpers in 1892-94 for the thousandth anniversary of the conquest. It shows Árpád and the Magyars pouring into the Carpathian Basin, and you stand in the middle with real earth and props blending into the painted scene. It was cut up and stored badly for decades, and restored in the 1990s. Around it is an open-air museum of village houses from the plain.
Have lunch at the restaurant in the heritage park, or, with a car, at Fehértó Halászcsárda on the way back, by the lake, which raises its own fish. Make it the dish of the plain: paprikás csirke, chicken paprikash with sour cream and nokedli dumplings, or lecsó, peppers and tomatoes stewed with paprika, which is at its best right here in late summer.
Spend the afternoon at Napfényfürdő Aquapolis in Újszeged, the city's big modern spa by the bridge: thermal pools, saunas and a water park, open all year until 8pm. A day ticket is about 15 EUR on weekdays and 25 EUR at weekends; a three-hour ticket is cheaper and enough. If it's summer, swap it for the Tisza beach at Partfürdő next door.
For the last night, go back to fish soup or try something new, and drink the wines of the plain. The sandy soils between the Danube and the Tisza make light, easy whites and reds from the Csongrád and Kunság regions, and the wine bars in the center pour them alongside the big names, Tokaj included. End the night on Dóm tér, lit up and quiet.
Five days cover Szeged and its neighbors. With longer, these are the best things to add, all within about two hours.
Hungary's first tram-train runs from Szeged's streets onto the railway to Hódmezővásárhely, a farming town with good museums: the Tornyai János Museum and the Alföld Gallery of painters of the plain, and the Emlékpont, a museum of life under the communists. The town's pottery tradition is still alive.
Getting there: 26 km northeast, about 40 minutes on the tram-train from Szeged
A small town with a big medicinal bath, the Szent Erzsébet. Nearby, in the reserve at Nagyszéksós, water buffalo graze on the salt meadows.
Getting there: 20 km west, about 30 minutes by bus
Makó is famous for its onions and for the buildings of Imre Makovecz, the architect of Hungarian organic architecture: the Hagymaház theater, the Hagymatikum thermal bath, even the bus station, all curves and wooden domes. It's an odd and rewarding half day.
Getting there: 35 km east, about 45 minutes by bus
Fehér-tó, part of the Kiskunság National Park, is one of the largest soda lakes in Hungary and one of the best bird sites in the country, with some 280 species recorded. In October and November tens of thousands of cranes stop here on their way south. Visits are only with a guide.
Getting there: 10 km north of Szeged; guided visits only
Kecskemét, the apricot brandy capital of Hungary, has some of the country's best Hungarian Art Nouveau: the colorful Cifrapalota, the Town Hall by Ödön Lechner and a whole main square of grand buildings. Zoltán Kodály was born here.
Getting there: 90 km north, about an hour by InterCity train
The open grassland of the Great Plain, the puszta, is best seen at Bugac in the Kiskunság National Park, with grey cattle, racka sheep with spiral horns and a horse show by the csikós, the Hungarian horseherds, who ride standing on the backs of two horses. Shows run from May to October, on Wednesdays and Friday to Sunday.
Getting there: About 100 km north, 1 hour 15 minutes by car; by train to Kiskunfélegyháza and then a bus
Szeged cooks with paprika and river fish, and its two great exports are both red: ground paprika and Pick salami. These are the dishes and drinks not to leave without trying.
Szeged's fish soup: several river fish boiled down and strained into a smooth, paprika-red broth, with pieces of fish added at the end, and never pasta. It's the dish of Christmas Eve across Hungary, and the reason people drive to Szeged.
Where to try it: The fish taverns on the Felső Tisza-part, Kiskőrössy and Öreg Kőrössy, and fish restaurants in the center.
The national dish isn't a stew but a soup: beef, onion, potato and plenty of paprika, cooked slowly, originally in a cauldron over a fire by the cattle herders of the Great Plain. What the rest of the world calls goulash, Hungarians call pörkölt.
Where to try it: Any traditional restaurant, often as part of a cheap lunch menu.
Paprikás csirke: chicken braised with onion and Szeged paprika and finished with sour cream, served with nokedli, small soft egg dumplings. Made with Szeged paprika, it's at its best here.
Where to try it: Traditional restaurants and lunch menus.
Szeged paprika is ground from peppers grown around the city, in grades from sweet to hot. Pick salami, made in Szeged since the 1860s, is a dry winter salami ripened with a white mold, sliced thin. Both are Hungarikums and the best souvenirs from the city.
Where to try it: Mars tér market, and the Pick brand shop on Maros utca.
Deep-fried flatbread, rubbed with garlic and topped with sour cream and grated cheese. The street food of markets, beaches and swimming pools.
Where to try it: Mars tér market and the Tisza beach at Partfürdő in summer.
Dobos torta is five or six thin layers of sponge with chocolate buttercream and a hard caramel top, invented in Budapest in 1884. Rétes, Hungarian strudel, is filled with apple, cottage cheese, poppy seed or sour cherry, in pastry stretched so thin you could read through it.
Where to try it: Virág Cukrászda on Klauzál tér, and Hatos Rétes for strudel.
Chimney cake: a strip of sweet dough wound around a wooden roller, baked over charcoal until caramelized and rolled in sugar, cinnamon or walnuts. It comes from the Székely Hungarians of Transylvania.
Where to try it: Stalls at festivals and the Advent market on Dóm tér.
Pork stewed with sauerkraut, paprika and sour cream. In German it's Szegediner Gulasch, but in Hungary it has nothing to do with Szeged: the legend says it's named after József Székely, a county archivist who ordered it late one night in 1846 in a Pest restaurant from what was left in the kitchen. Whatever its origin, it's a perfect winter dish.
Where to try it: Traditional restaurants in the center.
Peppers, tomatoes and onions stewed with paprika, sometimes with sausage or eggs. The plain around Szeged grows the peppers, and in late summer it's on every table.
Where to try it: Lunch menus in summer and autumn.
The sandy soils of the Great Plain around Szeged, the Csongrád and Kunság regions, make light, easy reds and whites for everyday drinking. On a hot day, do as locals do and order a fröccs, wine mixed with soda water. For something special, every good wine list in Hungary has Tokaji Aszú, the sweet wine of noble-rot grapes from Tokaj in the northeast.
Where to try it: Wine bars in the center, and the Szeged Wine Festival on Széchenyi tér in late May.
Fruit brandy, distilled from plums, pears, cherries and above all apricots, the specialty of Kecskemét an hour north. Served barely chilled in a tulip glass and sipped, not shot.
Where to try it: Restaurants and bars everywhere.
A university town drinks beer, and Szeged has a small craft scene alongside the big Hungarian brands, with local IPAs and pale ales on tap in the bars around Dugonics tér.
Where to try it: The bars of the center and the riverside in summer.
Szeged is flat and compact. Anywhere in the inner ring puts days one to three within walking distance, and the station is a short tram ride away.
Best for: First-timers who want to walk everywhere
Between Dóm tér, Klauzál tér and the river. Close to everything, with hotels and apartments in old buildings. The catch is student noise on weekend nights near Dugonics tér.
Best for: A quieter base by the cathedral
The streets around the cathedral and the river. Calm in the evening and steps from the sights, but busy and noisy in July and August during the Open-Air Festival.
Best for: Baths, green space and summer
Across the Tisza, near the spa, the botanical garden and the river beach. Quiet and leafy, with a 15-20 minute walk over the bridge to the center.
The practical stuff that makes the first day in Szeged easier.
Hungary uses the forint (HUF), not the euro, at around 365-390 forints to the euro, and Serbia uses the dinar. Cards work almost everywhere. When a card machine offers to charge you in euros, choose forints or dinars.
Serbia isn't in the EU or Schengen, so take your passport to Subotica, and check your roaming plan: EU roaming rules don't fully apply there yet. Most visitors from the EU, the US, the UK, Canada and Australia don't need a visa for a short stay.
The center is flat and best on foot or by bike, and Lime runs bike-sharing. Trams and trolleybuses go further; tap a contactless card at the machine on board (a single is 550 forints) or buy in a mobile-ticket app. Timetables for buses and trains are on menetrendek.hu and the MÁV app.
The cathedral visitor center and tower are closed on Mondays, and the New Synagogue on Mondays and Saturdays. The Serbian church, City Hall and water tower open only on certain days or by appointment. That's why this plan starts on a Tuesday.
Around 10% in restaurants is normal, unless a service charge (szervizdíj) is already on the bill. Tell the waiter the total you want to pay when you hand over the card.
Hungarian isn't related to its neighbors' languages. Younger people speak English, and many people here speak some Serbian or German. Köszönöm (thanks), szia (hi) and egészségedre (cheers) are worth learning.
Hungary is in the EU, so EU roaming works like at home; check your plan for Serbia. Plugs are the usual European two-pin type (C and F), 230 V.
Not if you use the region. The city needs two or three days, and Subotica, Ópusztaszer and the baths fill the rest at an easy pace. With two days, do days one and two of this plan.
The Votive Church and Dóm tér, the Reök Palace and the Art Nouveau streets, the New Synagogue, the Móra Ferenc Museum, the Anna Bath and a bowl of fish soup by the Tisza. This plan covers all of them.
Subotica and Lake Palić just over the Serbian border, for more Art Nouveau, which is day four here, best on a Tuesday to Friday. Ópusztaszer and the Feszty Panorama is the one for Hungarian history.
Yes. It's one of the finest cities in Hungary outside Budapest, with some of the best Art Nouveau in the country, great food and a relaxed university-town feel, at a fraction of Budapest's prices.
By InterCity train from Budapest-Nyugati, about 2.5 hours, hourly. By car it's about 2 hours on the M5 motorway.
No. A coffee is around 2 EUR, a two-course lunch menu 8-12 EUR and a fish soup dinner 15-25 EUR.
Mostly no. Prices are in forints, so pay by card or withdraw forints from a bank ATM.
Find Szeged on the map, learn the flag and check how much you really know about Hungary.
A baroque town that held off an Ottoman army, then spent the next centuries digging wine cellars into its hills.
Two cities on one river, thermal water under both, and a hundred years of history you can still see on the walls.
Hungary's southern city: Roman tombs, Ottoman domes, glazed Zsolnay roofs and a wine country half an hour away.
