Gisela Days

Gisela Days are festivities when we, the people of Veszprém, celebrate ourselves. It is a true festival in the city – a weeklong event with nearly four dozen venues downtown offering a wide range of free music, art, religious, literary and family entertainment. It is the first time each year that the streets of the Castle District and the city centre fill up and different happenings offer themselves on every corner from morning till night. We enjoy contemporary programmes while we honour the city’s thousand-year-old history, religious tradition and celebrate the life of Blessed Gisela.

Gisela Days in Veszprém have always been the most important opportunities to demonstrate the achievements of local creative communities. We will provide these entities with even more show opportunities and many new, VEB2023-inspired initiatives will be featured in 2023:

• The communities of Veszprém’s 15 districts will parade through the city, dressed in traditional costumes with their newly designed flags and symbols.
• Secondary school students in costumes from a winning national design competition will recreate the court of King Stephen and Gisela and join the parade in a historical fashion show.
• The Erkel Ferenc Brass Band, organized with ECOC financial support, will demonstrate the joy of community music making.

In 2023, "Gisela" will also be a time for international meetings. We will revive the somewhat obsolete tradition of inviting and hosting our twin cities, not only their mayors but their artists and other creatives, to jointly evoke (or rediscover) the unique link connecting our cities, the foundation of our friendship.

We expect to host literary figures from Passau, Saumur, Tarnow and Tartu who will present their exciting worlds in the form of music and puppet shows. The works, translated into Hungarian, will be presented in special performances to give examples of the relationship between their creative communities and cities often mirroring the relations between Veszprém artists and our city.