Kecskemét

Archaeological finds near Kecskemét go back about 5,000 years. By the early 13th century seven villages in the area were destroyed in the Mongol invasion; some revived when the Cumans were settled here. Lying on an important trade route, Kecskemét grew as a customs post and market, and in 1368 a charter of Louis I called it a town. Under Ottoman rule it was protected by palisades and by paying its taxes directly to the pasha in Buda, so people from the surrounding villages took refuge here and the town absorbed their lands. By the early 18th century its citizens grazed nearly 30,000 cattle on common pasture.

Overgrazing by cattle stripped the pastures and set the sand moving, and the town replanted the land with trees, fruit and vines. When phylloxera destroyed the hill vineyards in the late 19th century, the vines of the sandy plain survived, and in the 1870s landowners planted large vineyards around the town. As farmers grew richer and trade quickened, the town built its Art Nouveau centre of around 1900 — the town hall, the Cifrapalota, the New College and the Luther Palace.

The Depression and the Second World War ended the boom, and in May and June 1944 most of the city's Jews were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most were killed. Under communism Kecskemét lost much of its territory to new villages but became the seat of Bács-Kiskun, the country's largest county, in 1950. The architect József Kerényi adapted historic buildings for new uses, among them the Franciscan monastery that became the Kodály Institute. In 2012 Mercedes-Benz opened its car plant, which has transformed the city's economy.

Kecskemét's cultural identity is bound up with Zoltán Kodály, born here in 1882 and the creator of the Kodály method of music education. The Zoltán Kodály Institute, opened in 1975, and a specialist singing and music school carry on his teaching, and it was Mihály Vég of Kecskemét who translated the psalm that Kodály set in his Psalmus Hungaricus. The playwright József Katona, author of Bánk bán, was born here too, and the theatre bears his name.

The city's other great calling card is its architecture. The town hall by Ödön Lechner and Gyula Pártos was meant to show a Hungarian style, and the Cifrapalota, with its colourful decorated façades, is one of the finest examples of Hungarian Art Nouveau. An unusually rich set of museums — photography, naive art, toys, folk crafts, medical history and Calvinist church history — reflects the city's tradition of collecting. Kecskemét is known as the "hírös város", the famous town, a nickname that appears in the names of local festivals, clubs and newspapers.

The calendar includes the Spring Festival in March, the annual Hírös Week festival, the Kecskemét Animation Film Festival, and the international air show held every two years at the military air base, home to the only jet-fighter unit of the Hungarian Defence Forces.

Kecskemét had about 111,000 residents at the 2011 census, making it the eighth-largest city in Hungary and the second largest on the Southern Great Plain after Szeged. Its labour market draws on 17 surrounding settlements. Since the Mercedes-Benz plant opened in 2012 the city has become one of Hungary's car-making centres: Mercedes employs about 5,000 people, alongside suppliers such as Knorr-Bremse and ACPS Automotive, the logistics company Duvenbeck and food producers Fornetti and Univer. Unemployment was about 2.7 per cent in 2024.

The city takes in inner residential quarters such as Árpádváros, Máriaváros and Széchenyiváros, and former villages such as Hetényegyháza. Beyond them lie orchards, vineyards and scattered cottages, a pattern that dates from the vine plantations of the 1870s. Buses and trolleybuses carry commuters to the industrial parks, and many routes run directly to the factory gates.

The flat, sunny land around the city supports wheat, apricots, peppers and tomatoes.

Kecskemét is best known for barackpálinka, apricot brandy, made from the apricots that thrive on the sandy soils and sunshine around the city; Kecskemét's apricot pálinka carries a protected designation, and a Zwack distillery works in the city. Pálinka is a fruit spirit protected in the European Union as a Hungarian speciality, most often made from plums, apricots, apples, pears or cherries.

The city sits in the Kunság, part of the Duna region, the largest of Hungary's main wine regions, whose vineyards between the Danube and the Tisza go back to the plantings of the 1870s, when phylloxera spared the plain. Peppers and tomatoes from the surrounding farms go into lecsó, a summer stew of peppers, tomatoes and onions.

Local cooking is the hearty food of the plain: gulyás, which grew out of the kettle cooking of the herdsmen, pörkölt stews, and hortobágyi palacsinta, savoury crêpes filled with a paprika-seasoned meat stew and topped with sour cream.