Kosice is the second largest city in Slovakia, and until we arrived in Bratislava I didn’t know it existed. It has a population of about 230,000, and historically has bounced between Hungary and Slovakia with a hundred years of Ottoman rule. Today the population is overwhelmingly Slovak.
Our first stop was St. Elizabeth’s Cathedral which is the Easternmost Cathedral in the Roman Catholic Church. Like most Cathedrals it is an imposing site in the center of town and is one of two buildings located in the center of the long rectangle that is the center of the city.
The interior was nice and we enjoyed looking at the art from several different eras of the church. Much of the interior artwork appeared to have been done by Hungarian artists as they dominated the town when the Cathedral was last renovated.
We have noticed that one unique feature of Slovak towns outside of Bratislava is the lack of a large town square. Instead there is a long but rectangular center of the town that is formed by townhouses with occasional gates to allow access to surrounding streets. The only buildings inside the rectangle seem to be the main church and a government building. In the case of Kosice this rectangular center is over a kilometer in length.
In the case of Kosice this Kilometer was all that got our attention. We walked up and down it a few times, stopping once at a very posh coffee shop in a hotel, and once in a brewery that dated back to 1521.
After a few hours walking the market kilometer, and a few of the streets surrounding it, we were tired and headed back to François. Kosice retains much more of the “Brutalist” architecture of the communist era than Bratislava. It may also mean that a lot more of the older buildings were demolished during that period. The older 19th century buildings are much more “charming” than the block concrete buildings of the communist era and may have led to our inability to find a reason to venture out from the center.
On the tram ride back to François Ton and I agreed that Kosice was a nice city, but a little bit uninspiring. We had originally planned on two days, but are now considering shifting to a small wine region near the Hungarian border for our last day in Slovakia on this trip.