SZÖGEDiSzeged, as the locals tell itMagyar
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Bonus trip · Buildings Walk

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Ady tér 10 · 2004 · Tibor Szántó and László Mikó

In 1921 Szeged's university library started without a single book. 83 years later a 25,000 m² glass palace went up for it on the university's sports field.

The university moved from Kolozsvár (today Cluj-Napoca) to Szeged in 1921, but its library stayed behind in Kolozsvár. So the Szeged university library started with no books at all: two rooms in the building on Dugonics tér.

It grew from donations. The Széchényi Library of the National Museum sent 11,000 volumes, the Budapest University Library 9,600, the Metropolitan Library 5,700 and the Academy Library 5,000. With legal deposit copies it had 50,000 volumes by July 1922.

A building of its own was talked about almost from the start, but it never happened. The library stayed in the Dugonics tér building for over seventy years. Planning finally sped up in 1997, under director general Béla Mader.

The design competition was won by Középülettervező Iroda together with Szántó & Mikó Architects; the building was designed by Tibor Szántó and László Mikó. Everything sits on a 7.20 × 7.20 metre grid: columns, rows of shelves, reading desks.

It went up on the university's sports field on Ady tér, once the new sports centre on Hattyas sor was finished. The foundation stone was laid on 23 March 2002, in foul weather. It cost 7.5 billion forints gross.

Between September and November 2004, 28,000 linear metres of books, documents, furniture and computers were moved here from the central and faculty libraries, about 400 metres a day. It opened on 9 December 2004.

Five ceremonial banners hang in the atrium in chronological order, each with the writing of an era: Gothic letters from the Illuminated Chronicle, the type of Miklós Misztótfalusi Kis's 1698 cookbook (the only known copy is here, in the library), the Baroque handwriting of the Wesselényi–Zrínyi alliance letter, the dedication of Széchenyi's Hitel (Credit), and finally Attila József's poem “Istenem” (My God) in binary code. They were designed by typographer Erika Szántó.

Since 2005 it has carried the name of the poet Attila József. Today it houses the Klebelsberg Library: about 3 million items, more than 350,000 volumes on open shelves across four reading floors. The largest hall seats over 680. In 2013 an English-language list put it among the world's 50 most beautiful university libraries.

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