Few town halls have ever been so far from bureaucratic understatement. Built in the early twentieth century to designs by Marcell Komor and Dezső Jakab, Subotica City Hall applies the full vocabulary of the Hungarian Secession to a civic programme: a tall central tower, sweeping rooflines clad in glazed ceramics, ornament drawn from regional folk art, and interiors where stained glass and painted decoration turn council chambers into set pieces. The film details the craftsmanship - the ceramic work, the joinery, the leaded glass - and explains how a provincial city on the Hungarian-Serbian border came to commission architecture of this ambition. Sequences from the tower survey the surrounding plain, and the building is followed in its continuing role as the seat of municipal administration. An outstanding architecture title, and a natural pairing with the Subotica Synagogue.
