Visegrád Group Cities Exhibition Opens in Szeged

An exhibition on cities of Visegrád Group countries with boulevards – Szeged, Krakow, Brno and Košice – opened on Thursday at the headquarters of the Szeged regional committee headquarters of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Chief curator Máté Tamáska said at the opening of the exhibition dubbed 'Promenades, Trams, Palaces - The World of Tours' that in the 19th century, tours were primarily seen as a means of greening overcrowded cities.

"The tree-lined avenues and parks promised fresh, dust-free air and it was only later that architectural developments began, with palaces and apartment buildings being built on valuable plots of land connected to the tours," he pointed out.

He added that the transport function of tours appeared later, which was at the expense of green spaces.

In central Europe, in the cities of today's Visegrád Group, the Vienna Ring and the Budapest Grand Boulevard were a particular source of inspiration, he said. The medium-sized cities of the region have retained much of the atmosphere of the turn of the century and public transport was still dominated by trams that appeared at the turn of the century, he added.

The exhibition was organized by four institutions: the Hungarian National Archives acting also as the coordinator, the technical universities of Košice and Brno, and the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.