The elegant two-storey townhouse at the corner of Kazinczy Square and Mártírok street was commissioned by Dr. József Keresztury, lawyer and former mayor of the city for his family in 1904, designed by the renowned architect Tamás Morandini. It was in this very year that his son, the distinguished literary scholar Dezső Keresztury, was born.

The academic, however, was not born in the new house, but in the older, single-storey dwelling that previously occupied the same plot. During the construction works, the family moved to their hillside dwelling in Jánkahegy, an estate that today serves as the Keresztury House, home to a literary and creative centre.

The entrance to the city-centre apartment overlooking the main square opens from Mártírok Street through a small courtyard. Visitors should take note of the upper façade, where eclectic ornamentation mingles with Baroque-inspired elements. The family residence and the father’s law office were located on the upper floor, while the ground floor has always been home to various shops.

On the Mártírok street side, a relief sculpture by the city’s celebrated ceramic artist János Németh was installed in 2014 to mark the 110th anniversary of Dezső Keresztury’s birth. The artwork bears two lines from his poem “Transdanubian Hexameters”:
“Here, here is our place: with our eyes on distant skies,
Yet descending always to the nest of our native soil.”