Szeged

People have lived where the Maros meets the Tisza since ancient times. Ptolemy recorded a place called Partiscum here, the Romans had a trading post on an island in the river, and Szeged itself is first named in a document of King Béla III in 1183. The Mongols destroyed the town, but its people returned from the marshes and rebuilt it. Under Louis the Great it became the most important town in southern Hungary, Sigismund gave it walls, and in 1498 it was made a free royal town. The Ottomans pillaged it in 1526 and held it from 1543 to 1686 as an administrative centre.

Prosperity returned in the 18th century, with a Piarist school, though also with witch trials in 1728–44. Szeged played a leading part in the revolution of 1848–49, when it was the last seat of the revolutionary government and Kossuth gave his last public speech here. The railway arrived in 1854, and in 1869 Mark Pick opened the shop that became the salami factory. Then, in March 1879, the Tisza flood destroyed the town: only 265 of 5,723 houses survived. Emperor Franz Joseph promised that Szeged would be more beautiful than before, and the city was rebuilt with ring boulevards, palaces and the votive church.

After 1920 Szeged lay near the new border, but it gained the university moved from Kolozsvár in 1921 and became a bishopric in 1923. Around 6,000 inhabitants were killed in the Second World War, and in June 1944 the Jews of the city and nearby villages were deported from the ghetto. Under communism Szeged grew as a centre of light and food industry, oil was found nearby in 1965, and neighbouring villages were annexed in 1973. Today it is a university city and a popular destination.

The summer Open-Air Festival, held since 1931, is the event that made the city's name: each summer Dóm Square is turned into an open-air theatre, with the cathedral as backdrop. The National Theatre and the Szeged Symphony Orchestra keep a full season through the rest of the year, and the Szeged Youth Days festival brings a younger crowd. The rebuilt city is a showcase of Art Nouveau and historicist architecture, from the Reök Palace and Baumhorn's synagogue to the palaces of Kárász utca and Klauzál Square; in 2023 the city won the Hild János Prize for the renewal of its centre.

The University of Szeged, among the largest and oldest in Hungary, gives the city a large student population, many of them foreign medical students, and the ELI attosecond laser research centre opened in 2018. Szeged is largely Catholic by tradition, and the Franciscan church of Alsóváros, with its Black Mary icon, is one of its oldest churches.

Local crafts include the Szeged slipper (papucs), the red women's slipper of local folk dress, and the rose growers of Szőreg keep a tradition of close to a century. Handball is the city's favourite sport: SC Pick Szeged won the EHF Cup in 2014 and plays at the Pick Aréna, opened in 2021.

Szeged had about 159,000 residents at the 2022 census, around 40 per cent of the population of Csongrád-Csanád County, down by more than 9,000 since 2011. It is the regional centre of the Southern Great Plain and an important centre of science and culture. Food industry is the traditional base — Pick salami, paprika, dairy and meat processing — and BYD announced plans to begin building cars in the city by the second quarter of 2026.

Most residents live in the districts around the centre — Rókus, Móraváros, Felsőváros and Alsóváros — in Tarján and the other outer districts, or across the river in Újszeged. Public transport is good for a city of its size, and since 2021 the tram-train has tied Szeged to Hódmezővásárhely, forming the country's second-largest urban area after Budapest. The motorways towards Belgrade and Timișoara and the nearby Serbian border make the city a transport hub.

Life moves outdoors for much of the year in this sunny city: cafés on Klauzál Square, evenings at the baths and festival nights in summer. The city has been led since 2002 by Mayor László Botka, now of the Association for Szeged.

Szegedi halászlé is the city's signature dish: a slightly spicy paprika fish soup traditionally cooked in a kettle with at least four kinds of river fish, mostly carp, catfish, sterlet and pike. It is served mild unless ordered hot, and the traditional fish taverns along the Tisza are where locals go for it. It has its own festival in September and a long rivalry with Baja's version, made with thick pasta.

Paprika arrived in Hungary in the second half of the 16th century as an ornamental plant and about a century later was being grown as a spice; Szeged is known as its home, producing sweet, hot and rose varieties. Abroad, Székely goulash of pork and sauerkraut is sometimes called 'Szegediner Gulasch', though the dish does not come from Szeged. Pick salami, a winter salami made in the city since the 19th century, is exported around the world.

For sweets, the confectioners of Klauzál Square are a local institution, Hatos Rétes among them, known for strudel. Onions from nearby Makó and summer lecsó, a stew of peppers, tomatoes and onions, complete the picture of southern plain cooking.