The cells
Stone and iron rings as they were, below street level.
ZemplinTemplar — CC BY-SA 4.0 · ZemplinTemplar — CC BY-SA 4.0 · ZemplinTemplar — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Viktor Hézsely — CC BY 1.0
Two fifteenth-century Gothic houses merged into one building, which served as **the city prison** from the seventeenth century until 1909 — more than two hundred years. The name comes from Mikluš, its last warder, who lived in it. The display divides into two levels. Below are **the cells and underground rooms** as they were: stone walls, iron rings, and instruments of torture and punishment actually used in the city, with an explanation of how justice worked in a free medieval town — who was tried, on what charges, and how sentences were carried out. Note: **the lower section is genuinely harsh** and may not suit small children or a sensitive visitor. Upstairs the displays are lighter: the civic history of Košice, its crafts, the furniture of town houses, and a section on the fortifications — with remains of the **water tower** and old defences exposed in the rear yard. The building itself is part of the visit: stone vaults, narrow stairs and low ceilings.
Stone and iron rings as they were, below street level.
Who was tried in a free city, and on what charges.
Remains of the old defences exposed in the rear yard.
Hrnčiarska 7, Košice
**Geography and allegiance.** Košice was for centuries a Hungarian city called **Kassa**, one of the most important in the Kingdom of Hungary and its trading centre in the north-east. When Austria-Hungary broke up in 1918 it passed to Czechoslovakia, then **returned to Hungary between 1938 and 1945**, then came back. Its population was a mixture of Hungarians, Slovaks, Germans, Jews and Rusyns, and that is readable in its buildings, its cemeteries and its family names. Add that **the Hungarian and Ukrainian borders are very close**, and that eastern Slovakia holds the country''s largest Roma population. ⚠ Eastern Slovakia therefore feels different from the west in dialect, cooking and architecture — more different than a visitor expects in a country this size.
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