Things to do
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Early Christian Necropolis
Beneath the cathedral square lie fourth century burial chambers painted with Jonah, the apostles and the three men in the furnace, a Roman cemetery of unusual scale outside Italy. UNESCO listed the site in 2000. The Cella Septichora visitor centre roofs several tombs in glass, and an hour covers the underground route at a steady pace.
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Mosque of Pasha Qasim
Built in the 1540s from the stone of the Gothic church it replaced, the domed mosque on Széchenyi Square has served as a Catholic parish church since 1702. Mihrab niche, Quranic inscriptions and Ottoman window frames survive beside the altar. Services take priority on Sunday mornings, when visiting is limited.
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Pécs Cathedral
Four corner towers mark the skyline above the old town, the shape given to a much older building by Friedrich von Schmidt between 1882 and 1891. An eleventh century crypt survives below, the oldest part of the fabric. The cathedral shares its square with the necropolis, so the two are usually seen on one visit.
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Pécs TV Tower
A concrete mast rises from Misina peak in the Mecsek hills above the town, finished in 1973 and standing 197 metres, with a public viewing gallery partway up and a restaurant just below it. The outlook runs south over the plain towards Croatia in clear weather. A city bus climbs to the summit, and the walk up through the woods takes about an hour.
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Széchenyi Square
The old town climbs to this long sloping square, closed at the top by the dome of the Ottoman mosque and marked mid slope by a Trinity column. Cafés and the tourist office line the sides. Streets to the cathedral and to the Zsolnay quarter both begin here, which makes it the natural first stop in Pécs.
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Zsolnay Cultural Quarter
The Zsolnay ceramic works ran on this site from the middle of the nineteenth century, and the factory buildings reopened in 2011 as a quarter of galleries, workshops and stages. Exhibitions cover the eosin glazes and the pyrogranite that tiles landmark roofs across Hungary. A planetarium, a puppet theatre and cafés fill the rest, and an afternoon goes quickly.