Kiskunfelegyhaza: Extraordinary Town Hall with Zsolnay Ornaments

Kiskunfelegyhaza (if you can pronounce it you're better than me!) is a small city about an hour and a half train ride from Budapest.  It has an extraordinary Town Hall that we have long wanted to see.  So we hopped on a train and spent the day there.

Town Halls were important structures in Hungary around the turn-of-the-century.  They attested to civic identity in a country that was growing by leaps and bounds.  Kiskunfelegyhaza invited designs in 1903 but controversy greatly divided the town.  Should they keep the older classical style or build their town hall in the new Hungarian style of Odon Lechner and his followers? (There is a lot of ideology and history, as well as aesthetics, embedded into this question.)  The latter side won, and the commission was given to Jozsef Vas, who began construction in 1909.  After Vas's death, Nandor Morbitzer completed the building in 1911, adding the tower to keep the building even more in line with the Lechner school.

The building is decorated with Transylvanian folk motifs, including flowers, hearts and a multi-colored roof.

The inside was attractive as well, but paint obviously doesn't hold  up in the way the technology of the external Zsolnay tiles does. 

Later we got to see the façade in the slanting late afternoon sun, making the colors glow differently and the ornaments almost three-dimensional in appearance.

There were some other interesting buildings in this little city, but the Town Hall is clearly the star of the show.

Here for example is a building decorated with small tiles.  The little round decorations are drawn from Transylvanian embroidery knots.  

 A beehive on the top of a building, signifying this was once a bank (bees storing honey is an image of "saving.")

More little dots.

 And a perfect Art Nouveau railing.

#Kiskunfelegyhaza

#HungarianTownHall

#Zsolnay