Beside the River Danube the western border of the Southern Great Plainis marked by Hungary’s biggest river, the Danube. All the villages on the Danube’s eastern shore are strongly linked with it; their inhabitants have owed their living to it since time immemorial.
This area is not just good for fishing, there is an established tradition of viticulture as well. At Solt (C5) it is well worth visiting some of the five hundred underground cellars where wine can be sampled, and the Cellar Museum where there are displays all about local wine making.
One of the many popular holiday resorts along the Great Plain stretch of the Danube is Lake Szelidi (C5), formed from a backwater of the river. The saline, iodic water was used in the healing of wounds as far back as the Middle Ages, and is nowadays employed in the treatment of patients with locomotor disorders. Further south, at Dávod (C7), the medicinal waters have quite different properties. Here, the potassium and magnesium content is effective against rheumatic complaints and is also taken as a drinking cure for the prevention of tooth decay. There is an interesting “Tájház” local museum at Harta (C5), and the superb restoration of the eighteenth century Synagogue at Apostag (C5) has been recognized with the award of a European Nostra Prize. Further south, the Danube–Dráva National Park provides a safe and natural habitat for protected animals and birds. Its most remarkable treasure – Veránka Island – is hidden from view by the veritable jungle of waterside vegetation, but it is approachable by boat. Much of the area around the River Danube and its backwaters is reachable by small railway and bicycle.

Kalocsa (C5) the town and district is one of the main paprika producing areas in Hungary, and Kalocsa possesses a museum given over entirely to the subject. Red paprika can often be seen strung up for drying around the porches and porticos of the single-storey houses. But Kalocsa is also famed for its folk art. Traditionally, walls and furniture are decorated with patterns featuring wild flowers painted by the deft womenfolk. The same basic motifs appear also on the embroidered tablecloths and folk costumes. The 200-year old “Tájház” Local Museum has some spectacular examples on show. The town has been an archbishopric for a thousand years and boasts a fine baroque Cathedral and Bishop’s Palace.

Hajós (C6) an unforgettable experience awaits those who visit Hajós, with its twelve hundred architecturally unusual wine cellars, built by German settlers in the eighteenth century. The uniform little press-houses with their tiny windows and tiled roofs, concealing wine cellars hollowed out of the loess below, lie together in such profusion that they give the appearance of dwellings in a normal village street. Some owners welcome visitors to taste their fine wine not just during major festivals, when they choose from the priorly nominated candidates to install the “Knight of the Wine,” for example, but at other times as well. The Hajós area is also known as a place of pilgrimage, for the original settlers brought with them a Gothic Madonna from their own church at Bussen.

Baja (C6) one of the most attractive towns to be found along the River Danube. For over three centuries it has been home to a mixture of Hungarians, Germans, Croatians and Serbs. In the nineteenth century it was a major trading centre, and only Pest was more important in terms of the amount of corn exchanged. The wealth thus created is reflected in elegant public buildings and ornate churches. The centre of town life is Szentháromság tér (Holy Trinity Square), which is surrounded by the most beautiful buildings, among them the neo-Renaissance Town Hall. One side of the square opens out on to the backwater of the River Sugovica. Baja is in the Guinness Book of Records on account of the annual open-air fish soup cooking contest that takes place on the second Saturday of July. The main square and adjoining streets are filled to capacity by two thousand competitors cooking the famous Baja fish soup in traditional cauldrons.