around 1550, including Košice shown as
Kassa in 1683, including the
Principality of Upper Hungary, based around Košice shown as
Kassa The first evidence of habitation can be traced back to the end of the
Paleolithic era. The first written reference to the Hungarian town of Košice (as the royal village of
Villa Cassa) comes from 1230. After the
Mongol invasion in 1241, King
Béla IV of Hungary invited German colonists (see
Zipser Germans,
Germans of Hungary) to fill the gaps in population. The city was in the historic
Abaúj County of the
Kingdom of Hungary. There were two independent settlements, Lower Kassa and Upper Kassa, which were amalgamated in the 13th century around the long lens-shaped
ring, of today's Main Street (
Hlavná ulica). The first known
town privileges come from 1290. The town proliferated because of its strategic location on an
international trade route from agriculturally rich
central Hungary to central
Poland, itself part of a longer route connecting the
Balkans and the
Adriatic and
Aegean seas to the
Baltic Sea. The privileges given by the king helped develop crafts, business, increasing importance (seat of the royal chamber for
Upper Hungary), and for building its strong fortifications. In 1307, the first
guild regulations were registered here; they were the oldest in the Kingdom of Hungary. As a Hungarian
free royal town, Košice reinforced the king's troops at the crucial moment of the bloody
Battle of Rozgony in 1312 against the strong aristocratic
Palatine Amadé Aba (family). In 1347, it became the second-placed city in the hierarchy of the Hungarian free royal towns, with the same rights as the capital
Buda. In 1369, it was granted its
own coat of arms by
Louis I of Hungary. the prospect from
Civitates orbis terrarum. Cassovia (
, , ), the "capital" of
Upper Hungary in 1617. The significance and wealth of the city at the end of the 14th century were mirrored by the decision to build an entirely new church on the grounds of the previously destroyed, smaller St. Elisabeth Church. The construction of the
St. Elisabeth Cathedral, the biggest cathedral in the Kingdom of Hungary, was supported by Emperor
Sigismund, and by the
apostolic see itself. From the beginning of the 15th century, the city played a leading role in the
Pentapolitana – the
league of the five most important cities in
Upper Hungary (
Bardejov,
Levoča, Košice,
Prešov, and
Sabinov). During the reign of King
Matthias Corvinus, the town reached its medieval population peak. With an estimated 10,000 inhabitants, it was among the largest medieval cities in Europe. The history of Košice was heavily influenced by the dynastic disputes over the Hungarian throne, which, together with the decline of the continental trade, brought the city into stagnation.
Vladislaus III of Varna failed to capture the city in 1441.
John Jiskra's mercenaries from
Bohemia defeated Tamás Székely's Hungarian army in 1449.
John I Albert, Prince of Poland, failed to capture the city during a six-month-long siege in 1491. In 1526, the city paid homage to
the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I.
John Zápolya captured the town in 1536, but Ferdinand I reconquered it in 1551. In 1554, the settlement became the seat of the
Captaincy of Upper Hungary.
17th century In 1604,
Catholics seized the
Lutheran church in Košice. The
Calvinist Stephen Bocskay then occupied Košice during his Protestant insurrection against the
Habsburg dynasty, with the backing of the
Ottomans. The future
George I Rákóczi joined him as a military commander there.
Giorgio Basta, commander of the Habsburg forces, failed in his attempt to recapture the city. At the 1606
Treaty of Vienna, in return for giving back territory that included Košice, the rebels won from the Habsburgs a concession of religious toleration for the Magyar nobility and brokered an Austrian-Turkish
peace treaty. Stephen Bocskay died in Košice on 29 December 1606 and was interred there. For some decades during the 17th century, Košice was a part of the
Principality of Transylvania, and consequently a part of the
Ottoman Empire, and was referred to as
Kaşa in
Turkish. On 5 September 1619, the prince of Transylvania,
Gabriel Bethlen captured Košice with the assistance of the future George I Rákóczi in another anti-Habsburg insurrection. By the
Peace of Nikolsburg in 1621, the Habsburgs restored the religious toleration agreement of 1606 and recognized Transylvanian rule over the seven
Partium counties:
Ugocsa County,
Bereg County,
Zemplén County,
Borsod County,
Szabolcs County,
Szatmár County, and
Abaúj County (including Košice). Bethlen married
Catherine von Hohenzollern, of
Johann Sigismund Kurfürst von Brandenburg, in Košice in 1626. After Bethlen died in 1629, Košice and the rest of the Partium were returned to the Habsburgs. Subsequently, Košice became a centre of the
Counter-Reformation. In 1657, a printing house and university were founded by the
Jesuits, funded by
Emperor Leopold I. The 1664
Peace of Vasvár at the end of the
Austro-Turkish War awarded Szabolcs and Szatmár counties to the Habsburgs, which put once more positioned Košice further inside the borders of
Royal Hungary. In the 1670s, the Habsburgs built a modern pentagonal fortress (
citadel) south of the city. Also in the 1670s, the city was besieged by
Kuruc armies several times, and it again rebelled against the Habsburgs. The rebel leaders were massacred by the Emperor's soldiers on 26 November 1677. Another rebel leader,
Imre Thököly captured the city in 1682, making
Kaşa once again a vassal territory of the
Ottoman Empire under the
Principality of Upper Hungary until 1686. The
Austrian field marshal
Aeneas de Caprara took Košice back from the Ottomans in late 1685. In 1704–1711,
Prince of Transylvania Francis II Rákóczi made Košice the main base in his
War for Independence. By 1713, the fortress had been demolished. When not under Ottoman suzerainty, Košice was the seat of the Habsburg "Captaincy of Upper Hungary" and the seat of the Chamber of
Szepes County (Spiš, Zips), which was a subsidiary of the supreme financial agency in
Vienna responsible for Upper Hungary. Due to Ottoman occupation of
Eger, Košice was the residence of
Eger's archbishop from 1596 to 1700. From 1657, it was the seat of the historic Royal University of Kassa (Universitas Cassoviensis), founded by
Bishop Benedict Kishdy. The university was transformed into a Royal Academy in 1777, then into a Law Academy in the 19th century. It was to cease to exist in the turbulent year 1921. After the end of the anti-Habsburg uprisings in 1711, the victorious Austrian armies drove the
Ottoman Army back to the south, and this major territorial change created new trade routes that circumvented Košice. The city began to decline and, from a rich medieval town, became a provincial town known for its military base, and was mainly dependent on agriculture. In 1723, the
Immaculata statue was erected on the site of a former
gallows on Main Street (
Hlavná ulica) to commemorate the
plague of 1710–1711. The city also became one of the centers of the
Hungarian linguistic revival, including the publication of the first Hungarian-language periodical, called the Magyar Museum, in Hungary in 1788. The city's walls were demolished step by step from the early 19th century to 1856; only the
Executioner's Bastion remained among limited parts of the wall. The city became the seat of its own
bishopric in 1802. The city's surroundings became a theater of war again during the
Revolutions of 1848, when the Imperial cavalry general
Franz Schlik defeated the Hungarian army on 8 December 1848 and 4 January 1849. The city was captured by the Hungarian army on 15 February 1849, but the
Russian troops drove them back on 24 June 1849. In 1828, there were three manufacturers and 460 workshops. The first factories were established in the 1840s (sugar and nail factories). The first telegram message arrived in 1856, and the railway connected the city to
Miskolc in 1860. In 1873, there were already connections to
Prešov,
Žilina, and
Chop (in today's
Ukraine). The city gained a public
transit system in 1891 when the track was laid down for a
horse-drawn tramway. The traction was electrified in 1914. After
World War I and during the gradual break-up of
Austria-Hungary, the city at first became a part of the transient
Eastern Slovak Republic, declared on 11 December 1918, in Košice and earlier in Prešov under the
protection of Hungary. On 29 December 1918, the
Czechoslovak Legions entered the city, making it part of the newly established
Czechoslovakia. However, in June 1919, Košice was occupied again, as part of the
Slovak Soviet Republic, a
proletarian puppet state of Hungary. The Czechoslovak troops secured the city for Czechoslovakia in July 1919, which was later upheld under the terms of the
Treaty of Trianon in 1920.
Fate of Košice Jews Jews had lived in Košice since the 16th century, but were not allowed to settle permanently. There is a document identifying the local coiner in 1524 as a Jew and claiming that his predecessor was a Jew as well. Jews were allowed to enter the city during the town fair, but were forced to leave it by night, and lived mostly in nearby
Rozunfaca. In 1840, the ban was removed, and a few Jews were living in the town, among them a widow who ran a small
Kosher restaurant for the Jewish merchants passing through the town. Košice was ceded to Hungary by the
First Vienna Award from 1938 until early 1945. The town was
bombarded on 26 June 1941, by a still unidentified aircraft, in what became a pretext for the Hungarian government to declare war on the
Soviet Union a day later. The
German occupation of Hungary led to the deportation and almost certain extermination of Košice's entire Jewish population of 12,000 and an additional 2,000 from surrounding areas via
cattle cars to
Nazi concentration camps. A concentration camp was established in Košice under Hungarian
László Csatáry (1915–2013). In 1948, Csatary was tried and sentenced to death in absentia in Czechoslovakia, but he fled to Canada. Canadian officials accused him of lying about his wartime activities and, in 1997, stripped him of his citizenship. He was discovered living in Budapest in 2011 and detained there. He was arrested on 18 June 2013, aged 98, and died before trial on 12 August 2013. In 1946, after the war, Košice was the site of an orthodox festival, with a
Mizrachi convention and a
Bnei Akiva Yeshiva (school) for Jews, which, later that year, moved with its students to Israel. A memorial plaque in honor of the 12,000 deported and exterminated Jews from Košice and the surrounding areas in Slovakia was unveiled at the pre-war Košice Orthodox synagogue in 1992.
Soviet occupation The
Soviet Union captured the town in January 1945, and for a short time, it became a temporary capital of the restored
Czechoslovak Republic until the Soviets'
Red Army reached
Prague. Among other acts, the Košice Government Programme was declared on 5 April 1945. A large population of
ethnic Germans in the area was expelled and sent on foot to Germany or to the Soviet border. After the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia seized power in
Czechoslovakia in February 1948, the city became part of the
Eastern Bloc. Several
cultural institutions that still exist were founded, and large residential areas around the city were built. The construction and expansion of the East Slovak Ironworks caused the population to grow from 60,700 in 1950 to 235,000 in 1991. Before the
Velvet Divorce, it was the fifth-largest city in the federation.
Under Slovakia Following the Velvet Divorce and creation of the Slovak Republic, Košice became the second-largest city in the country and became the seat of the
Slovak Constitutional Court. Since 1995, it has been the seat of the
Archdiocese of Košice. After the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Košice, as a regional
metropolitan area, became a major hub for administration, transfer and housing of refugees fleeing from Ukraine. ==Geography==