Hungary · Great Plain
Szeged
A city rebuilt whole after the flood of 1879, with ring roads named for the capitals that paid, and the country's best fish soup.
Szeged is the sunniest city in Hungary and the most coherent-looking, because the Tisza destroyed it in 1879 and almost everything standing was built afterwards, quickly and to one plan of rings and avenues. European capitals sent money for the rebuilding, which is why its boulevards are named Vienna, Brussels, London, Paris and Rome. The result is a city of Art Nouveau and eclectic facades around the enormous brick Votive Church, filled out by a large university and a kitchen built on paprika and river fish.
Suggested stay
2–3 days
Language
Hungarian
Currency
HUF
Timezone
UTC+2
Why you'll love Szeged
The plan a whole city rebuilt in one go after 1879, ring roads named for the capitals that helped pay for it, and a centre that is all of a piece
Dom ter an arcaded square the size of a parade ground in front of the twin-towered Votive Church, ringed by a colonnade of busts and crossed by a musical clock's procession
The synagogue an Art Nouveau interior under a blue dome of stars, among the finest in Europe and still in use
The food Tisza fish soup, red with local paprika and argued over in two rival styles, plus the winter salami dried in cellars by the river
Best time to visit
Apr-Oct
18-29° days
46.255° N, 20.149° E
UTC+2 · Europe/Budapest
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Weather & when to go to Szeged
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr-Oct
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Szeged
Deep winter is cold and flat, with nothing on the plain to break the wind, and much of what there is to do is inside a handful of buildings. Midsummer is hot and this is the sunniest corner of the country, so the day divides into a morning, a long shaded lull and a very lively evening on the squares. Szeged is also a student city, so the holiday months take away a good part of the population that gives it its life.
Top things to do in Szeged
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The Votive Church on Dom ter
history 👍 PopularAn enormous neo-Romanesque brick church with twin towers, begun as a vow after the flood and finished half a century later, holding one of the largest organs in Europe and a mosaic-lined apse.
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Dom ter and the Pantheon
culture arts 👍 PopularThe biggest square in the country, arcaded on three sides, with a colonnade set with busts of Hungarian scientists, writers and kings, and a musical clock whose carved figures process at set hours. A stage is built across the front of the church for open-air theatre in the warm months.
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The New Synagogue
culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedAn Art Nouveau synagogue of 1903 under a dome painted with stars and flowers, with blue glass, white columns and a rabbi's own symbolism worked through the whole interior; one of the largest in Europe and still a working congregation's building.
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The Demetrius Tower
historyA square Romanesque tower stump beside the Votive Church, the oldest built thing in Szeged, uncovered when the medieval church around it was demolished for the new one and left standing on the square.
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The Reok Palace
culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedA green-and-white Art Nouveau apartment palace of 1907 on a corner of the ring road, its facade running with water-lily and wave motifs, now used as an exhibition hall.
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Szechenyi ter and the town hall
culture artsA plane-treed square the size of a park, with the yellow town hall on one side and a covered arch known as the bridge of sighs linking it to the building next door.
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Fish soup on the Tisza
food 👍 PopularHalaszle, made with river carp, a great deal of local paprika and nothing to soften it, cooked in a kettle and served with pinched pasta. The city argues permanently with Baja over whose version is correct.
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Paprika and winter salami
foodSzeged is one of the two paprika capitals of Hungary, ground here in every strength from sweet to fierce, and the salami dried by the river under a white mould has been made in the city for well over a century; a museum by the water covers both.
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The university quarter around Dugonics ter
nightlife musicThe main university building, a fountain that plays on the square, an indoor market nearby and the cheapest and busiest eating and drinking in the city, all of it driven by tens of thousands of students.
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Ujszeged and the botanical garden
nature wildlifeAcross the bridge, parkland along the far bank with a rose garden and open-air pools, and a university botanical garden further out whose ponds carry lotus flowers in summer.
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The Anna bath
wellnessThe old public bath in the middle of town, an eclectic nineteenth-century building over thermal water that the city drilled for and found, still working as baths rather than as a monument.
Best areas to stay in Szeged
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Belvaros
First-time visitors $$Inside the boulevards, squares and facades
Explore hotels in Belvaros →
Dugonics ter and the university quarter
Best value $Students, market, bars and cheap eating
Explore hotels in Dugonics ter and the university quarter →
Ujszeged
Quiet & green $$Across the Tisza, parks and quiet
Explore hotels in Ujszeged →
Alsovaros
Old quarter $Old lower town of single-storey houses
Explore hotels in Alsovaros →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Szeged
Getting to & around Szeged
Getting there
No airport: fast trains from Budapest take a little over two hours, and the motorway under two
Train
Szeged station
Fast trains from Budapest run in a little over two hours across the plain and arrive south of the centre, with a tram running from the door to the main square
Coach
Szeged bus station
Coaches serve the surrounding plain towns and cross the borders to Subotica in Serbia and toward Timisoara in Romania
Drive
The M5 motorway
Under two hours from Budapest on a straight run down the plain, and the way most people arrive with a car for the Serbian or Romanian border
Getting around
Tram
A small network that links the station, the main squares and the bridge over to Ujszeged, and does most of the work in the centre
TBC
Trolleybus
Runs the routes the trams do not, out to the residential districts on either side of the river
TBC
Bus
Covers the outer edges of the city and the villages on the plain around it
TBC
Walking
Completely flat and tightly planned, so the whole centre inside the ring roads is walkable
Free
Bicycle
One of the most cycled cities in Hungary, with lanes along most of the boulevards and out along the river
TBC
Taxi
Plentiful, and the simplest way back over the bridge late at night
TBC
Day trips from Szeged
Opusztaszer
Half dayHeritage park
The national memorial park where a vast circular painting of the Magyar arrival is displayed in the round in its own rotunda, with an open-air museum of plain villages, windmills and a school around it.
Getting there
bus | car
40 min by bus or car north
Mako
Half dayOnion town & baths
The onion and garlic town on the Maros, worth the trip for a set of organic, timber-and-turret public buildings by the architect Imre Makovecz, including thermal baths that look like nothing else in the country.
Getting there
bus | train | car
40 min by bus, train or car east
Bugac and the Kiskunsag
Full dayPuszta & horse show
Sand-dune grassland and juniper stands in the Kiskunsag National Park, where herders in wide blue trousers put on riding displays and the puszta looks the way the paintings have it.
Getting there
car | tour
1 hr 15 min by car north
Subotica
Full dayArt Nouveau over the border
Over the Serbian border, a town hall and a synagogue of extravagant Hungarian Art Nouveau in a place that shared this city's country until 1920. Carry a passport; the crossing can be slow at busy times.
Getting there
car | bus | train
1 hr by car, bus or train south
Hodmezovasarhely
Half dayPottery town
A sprawling market town of low houses on the plain, known for its folk pottery and a strong local school of painting, both well covered in the town museum.
Getting there
train | car
30 min by train or car north
A little history of Szeged
Szeged grew where the Maros meets the Tisza, on the trade in salt rafted down from the Transylvanian mines, and was made a free royal town in 1498. It was a frontier town under the Ottomans and later a Habsburg garrison and market centre, notorious in the seventeenth century for one of the largest witch trials in Hungary. Then in March 1879 the Tisza broke its banks and swept away all but a few hundred of the city's houses.
The rebuilding is the reason the city looks as it does. Foreign capitals contributed, and their names went onto the new ring roads; the plan gave Szeged wide avenues, a ring-and-radial layout and a decade of eclectic and Art Nouveau building, capped by the Votive Church that had been promised in the aftermath of the flood. After 1920 the university displaced from Kolozsvar settled here, and it was in its laboratories that vitamin C was isolated, largely from the local paprika.
Szeged becomes a free royal town on the salt route down the Tisza
One of Hungary's largest witch trials is held in the town
The Tisza floods and destroys almost the entire city
Szeged is rebuilt to a new ring plan, its boulevards named for the capitals that helped pay
The university displaced from Kolozsvar settles in the city
The Votive Church, vowed after the flood, is consecrated
A Szeged professor wins the Nobel prize for work isolating vitamin C, much of it from paprika
Know before you go
Payment
Cards & cash mixed
English
Widely spoken
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type C / F
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+36
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
FAQs about Szeged
▸ How many days do you need in Szeged?
Two is enough for the city: one for Dom ter, the synagogue and the boulevards, and one for the market, the river and Ujszeged. A third opens up Opusztaszer, Mako or a crossing to Subotica.
▸ What is Szeged fish soup and where do you eat it?
Halaszle: river carp cooked in a kettle with a great deal of paprika and served with pinched pasta, hot in both senses. The Szeged version strains the base and the Baja version does not, and locals will tell you which is right. It is on almost every menu in the centre and along the riverside.
▸ Why are the ring roads named after European cities?
After the 1879 flood, cities across Europe sent money for the rebuilding, and the new ring roads were named for them: Vienna, Brussels, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin and Moscow. It is the clearest legible trace of how the city was put back.
▸ Can you visit the synagogue?
Yes, it is open to visitors outside services, and the interior is the reason to come: a starred dome, blue glass and a symbolic scheme worked out by the rabbi who commissioned it. Cover your head as a man, as at any working synagogue.
▸ Is Szeged a good base for the border?
It is the natural one. Subotica in Serbia is about an hour away and the Romanian border is a similar distance east, with buses and trains running to both. It is also the last big Hungarian city on the road south, so it suits a break in a longer drive.
More in Hungary
Budapest
Two cities across one river, a parliament built to be seen from the water, and thermal springs under both banks.
✓ best Apr-OctDebrecen
The Calvinist capital of the Great Plain, with a thermal forest at one end of its high street and the puszta an hour west.
✓ best Apr-OctEger
A baroque town under the castle that held out in 1552, with a Turkish minaret in its middle and a valley of cellars on its edge.
✓ best Apr-Oct