Košice grew rich as a royal free town on the trade road from Buda to Kraków, and the layers show: a Dominican church begun in 1290, gun bastions of the 1440s, a mint striking coins until 1690, and the county hall where Czechoslovakia restarted in April 1945.
Two 15th-century burgher houses fused into the city jail in 1618 and used until 1909. Cells, the torture chamber and the executioner's quarters survive intact. Run by the East Slovak Museum, Tue–Sun 09:00–17:00, entry by guided tour.
A 1440s artillery bastion of the town wall with walls three metres thick, joined to Rodošto — the rebuilt Tekirdağ exile house of Ferenc II Rákóczi, whose remains were reburied in Košice in 1906. Renaissance well in the garden.
Excavated in 1996 under Hlavná, this subterranean museum exposes the medieval Lower Gate's foundations, the drawbridge pit, gun emplacements and the vaulted water channel that once ran the length of the street.
The oldest surviving building in the city, begun by the Dominicans around 1290. Gothic vaults hide beneath a 1704 Baroque skin and the 1755 tower is the tallest in Košice at 68 metres. Friars still occupy the adjoining cloister.
The 1779 County Hall where the Košice Government Programme was proclaimed on 5 April 1945, making the city Czechoslovakia's provisional capital for two months. Now the East Slovak Gallery with the historic hall preserved.
Built in 1927 and still in use, this synagogue holds the memorial to the roughly 12,000 Jews of Košice and the surrounding region deported from the city brickworks in May 1944. Marble tablets carry the recovered names.
Slovakia's national technical museum occupies the Mint House at Hlavná 88, where Košice struck royal coinage until 1690. Mining, metallurgy and blacksmithing halls, plus a working planetarium under the old roof.
A neo-Gothic villa of 1899 raised by builder Peter Jakab from stone left over from the cathedral restoration he supervised. President Edvard Beneš lodged here in April 1945; the gargoyles repeat the cathedral's carvings.
A hilltop pilgrimage complex begun in 1736 in thanksgiving after the plague years, with chapels climbing the slope to a Baroque church and a wooden crucifixion group. The crypt chapel keeps 18th-century votive plaques.
Potters' Street, the last surviving medieval lane inside the walls, restored as the Craftsmen's Alley. A bell-founder, blacksmith, weaver and bookbinder work in low burgher cottages beside an intact stretch of town wall.
Habsburg artillery barracks completed in 1897, emptied by the army in 2004 and converted for the 2013 European Capital of Culture. The three brick blocks keep their drill yard, cast-iron columns and stable arcades.
Raised between 1720 and 1723 in thanksgiving after the epidemic of 1710 that killed roughly a third of the city, and deliberately set on the ground of the medieval gallows and pillory. The Baroque figures are 1720s originals.