Zsolnay Mausoleum

The Zsolnay mausoleum is a building located in the “Ledina” district of Pécs, which was the burial place of the Zsolnay family. The mausoleum was renovated, so it has been open to visitors again since July 2011.

History

Vilmos Zsolnay died on 23 March 1900, and was buried in the Saint Michael chapel of the old cemetery in the Budai district of Pécs. In the following year, 1901, this building was erected under a roof according to the plans of his son, Tádé Sikorszky, who was the artistic director of the factory and a well‑known architect. With another 12 years of work, the son, Miklós, immortalized his father’s oeuvre.

On the evening of 13 October 1913 at half past nine, the silver‑gilded tin coffin was taken out of the cemetery on the shoulders of the son Miklós and the three grandsons, Zsolt, László and Tibor, and carried to the approach road leading to the mausoleum, where workers of the Zsolnay porcelain factory stood in rows and illuminated the scene with acetylene lamps. They placed it in the chapel, where a service was held, and then on 13 October 1913 at 11 a.m., at full moon, they lowered it into the crypt and placed it in the sarcophagus, which remains its resting place. In 1919, when the wife, Teréz Bell, died, the sarcophagus was deepened and she was buried above her husband.

Miklós Zsolnay, the son, died on February 25, 1922 in a sanatorium near Vienna, from which a special train transported his body to Pécs; the farewell speeches were held in front of the city hall, and afterwards he was placed in the crypt, one of the optically most important burial sites, which later also became the resting place of the two sisters. Miklós still rests in the crypt today. The coffins and urns of the other family members were vandalized, broken into, and their bones scattered. In 1986 the mausoleum was on the brink of total destruction, when a local patriot city protector, László Lovas, saved the mausoleum with 15 years of work and solved the eozin mystery, and can now prove it. He is the chairman of the curatorship created by the City Protector Association and the Zsolnay family.

About the building

The chapel has a special acoustics and optics, the interior sounds ring beautifully and can be heard outside the chapel as well.

The lower level can be reached through the north door of the mausoleum; for this we exit the chapel, walk around the building and can admire it from the outside. The circular structure is framed by steps, all curved ceramic steps, fired from frost‑resistant pyrogenic clay, on which we can see holes here and there, which are not without purpose. They serve the building’s natural air conditioning. With the six windows now without glass and the carefully calculated placed holes, the constant airflow ensures continuous ventilation.

The roof of the building is also covered with Zsolnay tiles, green glazed roof tiles. The water spouts, the 40 × 40 water‑draining trench are all works of the Zsolnay family.

On the north side of the building, entering through the other entrance, one can reach the burial place by 17 steps. Looking up through the circular opening in the middle of the chapel, one can see the semicircular relief placed above the south entrance, which resembles an eye. On the west side is the portrait of the sculptor Vilmos Zsolnay. On the south side we can see a ceramic‑historical curiosity, the red lantern.

The decoration of the east side of the sarcophagus is a shield. It was designed by Júlia at her father's request in 1892, and it was the first time the city's early‑Christian symbol was patterned by the Zsolnay family (the five towers, the emblem of Pécs), thus becoming the symbol of this family and the factory in the eozin period, which lasted from 1896 to 1922. It was used as a brand mark for the eozin glaze.

The promenade from the under‑construction Zsolnay quarter to the mausoleum is again adorned on both sides by 42 lion statues made of pyrogra​nit, and the walking surface has also been renewed. The renovations were carried out based on contemporary photographs and plans.

The red lantern

Minerva model Bell Teréz, the mother, to whom Vilmos Zsolnay symbolically offers the light symbol in the form of a lantern. He offers the eozin light, born at the light of her spirit. Vilmos Zsolnay is accompanied at this ceremony by the family. His son, Miklós, as a genius, as a guardian angel watches over his father's oeuvre, takes it under his wing, protects the two daughters, Júlia and Teréz. Their children carry on the name. Behind them the two husbands Matyasovszky Jakab, Teréz's husband, and Sikorszky Tádé, Júlia's husband. In the background the tent temple, the basic symbol of Christianity. In the proper lighting the main figure, Minerva, appears in gold‑purple, the side figures in gold‑purple‑silver, the two husbands in neutral colour, because they do not belong to the blood line.