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The land and houses of the Pécs City Centre - introduction

Pécs is one of those Hungarian cities that has essentially preserved its medieval urban structure until the 20th century. The street system within the city walls emerged in the middle ages. The Turks changed very little with their negligible building activity. The first noticeable change occurred in the liberation wars against the Turks, when during the heavy fighting, entire streets disappeared. For example, the housing block on today's Széchenyi tér in front of the County Council building disappeared, although traces can still be found under the street surface. After the liberation war against the Turks and the devastation of "kuruc" and "rác" [Serb], the city took over the ancient street system during the reconstruction, also because the houses were built on the foundations of the ruins of the earlier buildings. In retrospect, the city structure changed only a bit. In many other respects, however, the city has changed. The predominant style of the various periods has always left its stamp on the town. Construction was usually accompanied by destruction. The new result has mercilessly destroyed the old, regardless of the quality level. The transformation of the town began with the demolition of the gates. At the end of the 18th century, the city walls were more annoying than useful for the city. They were inconvenient for further development. The gates were therefore torn down, one after the other, sparing not even the walls; where a street had to be built, the wall was breached. This process began with the Barbakán. Access to the vineyards of Pécs was possible via the Északi kapu [North gate], or with a large detour through the Szigeti or Budai kapu [Szigeti or Buda gate]. Opening up the street and breaking through the wall next to the Barbakán was explicitly in the interests of the vineyard owners. They no longer had to make a detour. As of the end of the 18th century, the city wall gradually disappeared totally. It, however, was not demolished where houses which were built on small land parcels on both sides of the wall served as the rear walls, which supported the houses. Pécs of the 19th century had a Baroque character, despite the fact that most of the houses were expressly small-town like, even poor. Some of these one-storey houses still stand today. The single-storey town house on the east side of Fő tér [square] distinguished itself with its simple exterior rather than with Baroque splendour. It was the ecclesiastical buildings (churches, residences of the canons), which stood out from the buildings of the time in the first place. With right. Pécs was a clerical city with the bishop as landowner. In those years, the struggle for the liberation from manorial subjection took place (until 1780). This dispute cost much money, and especially for this reason, the city was economically not so strong that its leading citizens could have built themselves palaces. A major building programme occurred only in the first half of the 19th century. The patent law which was won around 1780 enabled the economic recovery.

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The reform era created favourable opportunities. The citizens who had become prosperous in turn began building. Classicism was the dominant style of this period. This was common in the 1930s and 40s also in Pécs and the construction styles in this time have transformed the Baroque face of the city significantly. A new town hall was built on the site of the old; on the east side of Fő tér [square], the houses of "business people", the Nádor (predecessor of the present hotel), the Polgári Casinó [civil casino] (forerunner of the building of the County Court), the theatre (in the Dériné, today Mária utca [Mary street]), the Nemzeti Casinó [National Casino] (in the place of the FEK), and the Episcopal library came into being. Numerically more than 40 Classicist public and private buildings were built in this time. The big boom was broken by the despotism which followed the war of independence. The 19th century is the golden age of industrialization of the city. The Danube Steamship Company acquired the small mines; the brewery, the ironworks, the leather factory, and porcelain factory were built; factory worker and mining classes developed. On the outskirts, rows of working class slums arose, in the city centre were frequently found the houses of newly wealthy citizens. In the 1960s, the Romantic style was a feature of the construction of the upper class (such as the Taizs House), the end of the century was determined by the eclecticism, which changed the city. Many extremely valuable cultural monuments disappeared under the pick hammer, in their place cheesy large palaces were created. Demolished were the Czindery and the Cséby houses, the Classicist Town Hall and the theatre, the Nádor hotel, the Dominican monastery the civil and the national Casino; also to disappear were the remnants of the bath of Memi Pasha; redesigned were the "Sétatér" [promenade], the Széchenyi, and the Kossuth tér, the Deák (today: Jókai) utca. The "new buildings" annoyingly jutted out from the, until then, homogeneous cityscape and by their dominant position have decisively changed the character of the city. (Postal Palace, Sparkasse, today seat of the County Council, National theatre, Central station, Nádor hotel, Lóránt Palace etc.) Since the 1930s, modern architecture penetrated the cityscape (such as the Belvárosi templom [Inner City Church]), but more moderate than the eclecticism, and initially not even in one case, harmoniously inserted in the familiar cityview (such as Üdülőszálló [Spa Hotel], Palos templom [Pauline Church]). Pécs became a major city in the second half of the 20th century. The monumental architecture completely changed the cityscape, despite the fact that the historic centre remained largely unaffected. The work of József Madas follows the tracks of this major transformation with the development and changes of inner-city properties. Actually, he reappraised the history of the city with a huge number of sources. At the same time, this work is a source for a collection of written monuments. Historians, as well architects concerned with the reconstruction of the city can find here the most important historical and technical data. For further, in-depth research help is available to list the original sources, their location and identification.

Győző Bezerédy