Košice Audioguides

Košice is not the city most people visit first in Slovakia, and that is their mistake. The Cathedral of St. Elizabeth -- Slovakia's largest church, and the easternmost Gothic cathedral of the western architectural tradition in all of Central Europe -- anchors a Main Street so intact that historians use it as a teaching example. Gothic palaces, Renaissance houses, Baroque facades, and Art Nouveau buildings line Hlavná ulica in a continuous parade that has survived the Ottomans, the Habsburgs, and the Cold War. In 1369 the city received a royal grant of its own coat of arms, making it the first settlement in Europe to be given one.

Košice sits twenty kilometers from Hungary and eighty from Ukraine, which has given it a character that is always slightly more Central European and less central-Slovak than Bratislava.

The Hungarian minority is significant, Hungarian is spoken on the street, and the city's cultural calendar has historically swung between Slavic and Magyar influences. In 2013 it held European Capital of Culture status alongside Marseille, which generated a wave of arts infrastructure and post-industrial renovation that permanently changed the neighborhoods around the old iron works. The Cassovia walking zone extends for over a kilometer along the old main street -- one of the longest pedestrian zones in Central Europe.