Košice

Košice was first recorded in 1230 as Villa Cassa. After the Mongol invasion of 1241, King Béla IV invited German colonists, and two settlements merged in the 13th century around the long, lens-shaped street that is today's Hlavná. The town received its first known privileges in 1290, and its position on the trade route from central Hungary to Poland made it rich, and in 1347 it was ranked second among the kingdom's free royal towns, with the same rights as Buda. In 1369 Louis I granted it the first coat of arms given to a town in Europe. Building began on the Cathedral of St Elisabeth, and by the late 15th century the town had about 10,000 inhabitants.

From the 16th to the early 18th century Košice was the seat of the Habsburg Captaincy of Upper Hungary and a base for the Protestant nobles' uprisings against the Habsburgs. When the wars ended in 1711, trade routes moved away, and the city declined into a provincial town known for its garrison; the railway arrived in 1860, and the first factories had opened in the 1840s.

In the 20th century it changed hands repeatedly: it became part of Czechoslovakia after the First World War, was ceded to Hungary in 1938, and in 1944 its Jewish population of about 12,000 was deported, most of them to Auschwitz. In April 1945 the Košice Government Programme was proclaimed here. The East Slovak Ironworks drove the population from about 60,700 in 1950 to 235,000 in 1991. After 1993 Košice became Slovakia's second city and the seat of its Constitutional Court, and after 2022 it became a hub for refugees from Ukraine.

Košice has long been a meeting point of Slovak, Hungarian, German and Jewish cultures, and it calls itself a city of peace. It has the largest number of protected historic monuments in Slovakia, a Hungarian theatre and a professional Roma theatre alongside the State Theatre's drama, opera and ballet companies, and the State Philharmonic, founded in 1968. Sándor Márai, the Hungarian writer born in the city in 1900, has a memorial in the centre.

The title of European Capital of Culture in 2013 aimed to move the city from heavy industry towards creative work. Old barracks became the Kasárne Kulturpark, a 1960s swimming pool became the Kunsthalle, and a former tobacco factory, Tabačka, became a home for independent culture. The festival calendar runs from Košice Music Spring and City Days in May to IFF Art Film in June, the Cassovia folk festival in late June, jazz festivals in autumn and the Christmas market.

Sport is a source of pride. The Košice Peace Marathon, first run in 1924, is the oldest marathon in Europe and the third-oldest in the world, and it is held on the first Sunday of October. HC Košice is the most successful ice hockey club in Slovakia, the city co-hosted the world championships in 2011 and 2019, and it was European City of Sport in 2016.

About 222,000 people lived in Košice at the end of 2025. Most of them live in the communist-era housing estates that quadrupled the city's population, such as KVP, built in the 1980s, while the old town has turned largely to shops, offices, bars and students. The city has three universities, the largest of them the Technical University, with about 16,000 students.

The steelworks, renamed Nippon Steel Slovakia in October 2026 and with about 13,500 employees, is the largest employer in the city and the largest private employer in the country. Information technology is the second pillar: Deutsche Telekom IT Solutions has been based in the city since 2006 and employs thousands, and an IT cluster has grown around it. Volvo Cars began building a car plant in 2023, and in 2025 it put back the start of production to 2027.

The city is also the administrative centre of eastern Slovakia and a gateway to Hungary and Ukraine. Poverty is concentrated in places such as Luník IX, an estate where one of the largest Roma communities in Slovakia lives with very poor services. Weekends take many residents into the wooded hills to the north and west, which public transport reaches.

Košice eats the hearty food of eastern Slovakia. Bryndzové halušky, potato dumplings with bryndza sheep's cheese, and bryndzové pirohy, dumplings filled with it, appear on most Slovak menus, as do kapustnica, a sauerkraut soup that often also contains mushrooms, meat and sausage, and segedínsky guláš, a pork stew with sauerkraut and cream or sour cream, served with slices of steamed dumpling. Lokše, pancakes of potato dough baked directly on the stove, are a common side.

Restaurants cluster on Hlavná and the streets beside it, with Slovak kitchens alongside pizzerias, Asian bistros and an Israeli falafel place. Many restaurants offer a cheap set lunch on weekdays and open only for dinner on Sundays. The market on Dominikánske námestie sells vegetables, honey, eggs and berries from the hills, and ice-cream parlours along the main street turn into pastry shops in winter.

Drink runs from beer gardens to brewpubs and beer bars. The Slovak part of the Tokaj wine region, the smallest of the country's six wine-growing regions, lies south-east of the city, and Šariš beer comes from the brewery at Veľký Šariš near Prešov. At the Christmas market, vendors sell hot mead and warm wine.