Hajos Cellar Village

Outside Hajos stands something that reads as a village until you notice nobody lives in it: more than a thousand small whitewashed press houses with cellars beneath, built in rows along lanes with their own street names, put up from the eighteenth century by Swabian settlers who kept their vines on the sandy land and their wine in the cool ground here rather than at home. It is among the largest cellar settlements in Europe. Most are still privately owned and used at harvest; a growing number open at weekends and in the season for tasting and food, and some have become guest houses. The lanes are quiet on weekdays, and the scale is only clear from the middle of them.

What you actually see

• Over a thousand press houses - a village of cellars with no residents.
• Named lanes between the rows - the settlement laid out as a real village.
• Swabian settler history - the eighteenth-century community that built it.
• Weekend tasting cellars - the ones opened to visitors.

When to go

May to October, and specifically weekends and the September harvest, when cellars open. Half a day. Midweek almost everything is locked. Book tastings ahead.

Honest expectations

Out of season it is a thousand closed doors and nothing to do. Public transport is poor and Hungary enforces zero tolerance for drivers, so plan accordingly. Many cellars are decaying and some lanes are shabby.

Nearby

Kalocsa is north; Baja lies south-west.