The appearance of a city such as Pécs resembles a multi-layered fabric: if one looks at the individual threads, each of them apart, one perceives only the single-coloured lines. Only the interaction of different threads and colours, depending on the incidence of light and angle of vision, creates a fickle colourful fabric before the eye of the beholder. At the points where the threads intersect to give the necessary support to the fabric, the interplay in the perception of texture and colour is especially intense.

Similar to a fabric pattern, the city encloses the personal images of its inhabitants. The memory of particular places and interrelations settles together as a mosaic in the minds of men. It assigns assertive qualities and characteristics to the places. And yet, only at the cross-points and intersections, do the individual images merge together thereby creating a common mental map of the city.

The exhibition designs a new map of the city. A map invites at the same time both the visitors to Pécs and the inhabitants of Pécs on a journey through space and time. In doing so, the map also refers to the equally well-known and unknown, or even forgotten images and aspects. Terms such as immigration and multiculturalism are words that more than ever mark the current debates. In the past, those concepts were in many border the regions of  South-Eastern Europe a lived reality, they were taken for granted and not constantly discussed, let alone questioned.

And so, over the centuries, people of different origins and denominations came to Pécs. They enriched the city, each in their own way. Their different languages, professions and traditions left their traces, some of which still exist today. Other crumbled over time or were deliberately destroyed. Several of them are still present in people’s minds, while others fell into oblivion. Also, the reciprocal influences of different groups in their daily cooperation and coexistence are often still visible, and can be located at numerous places within the city.

The exhibition exposes these traces of cultural exchange which on one side affected Pécs directly, while conversely also spread from Pécs out into the near and distant world. The interaction of Western and Eastern, Christian and Muslim, modern and traditional influences become comprehensible at distinctive intersections. This mental map, as a special city portrait of Pécs, intuitively links the past with the present and thus also provides opportunities for the future.