85km (53 miles) SE of Budapest
Kecskemét (pronounced Ketch-keh-mate), a city of just over 100,000 people in the western portion of the Great Hungarian Plain, definitely has a village feel. A quiet, sun-baked city with wide, open squares and broad avenues, Kecskemét is blessed with some of the most interesting architecture in the Great Plain region. The town's dizzyingly colorful Art Nouveau buildings may be the equal of any in the country outside Budapest.
Kecskemét was the birthplace of Zoltán Kodály, the early-20th-century musicologist, teacher, and composer who, along with his friend and colleague Béla Bartók, achieved worldwide renown for his studies of Hungarian folk songs and for his compositions. Kodály also developed a method of teaching music that is used worldwide. Today, a music school in town bears Kodály's name. Kecskemét is also famous throughout the country for its many varieties of apricot brandy (barack Pálinka).
