This intriguing city with Slovakian and Hungarian heritage is next year’s European Capital of Culture.
Kosice, next year's co-capital of European culture alongside Marseille, is one of those Eastern European cities where the authorities spent much of the 20th century renaming things. Standing on Hlavna, the main street, outside the Opera House, I can see that the city's Hungarian-speaking elite had the letters NSZ (the Hungarian abbreviation for National Theatre) carved on to its coat of arms for the grand opening in 1899. A more recent plaque on the opera house tells us that today it is known as the Statne Divadlo Slovak for National Theatre.
It's ironic that although the Hungarians and Slovaks had fought together to free Kosice from Habsburg rule, the Slovaks agreed in 1919 to be subsumed into Czechoslovakia, rather than Hungary, following the First World War.
A carillon in the park between the Opera House and St Urbain's Tower plays The Beatles' "Yesterday'', a surprisingly beautiful piece of music on bells. There is a waxwork museum within the medieval tower, the only waxworks in the world devoted to Slavs, which features Andy Warhol (whose parents lived 100km north of Kosice) and the great patriot Prince Francis Rakoczi II (1676-1735), who is buried in the cathedral next door. Rakoczi was actually a Hungarian but is also celebrated as a Slav military hero.
History is complex in Kosice. This east Slovakian city is a colourful mix of Renaissance, Baroque, rococo and Art Nouveau architecture, all testimony to the wealth derived from being on several major trade routes. Between world wars, the city enjoyed a brief Slavic heyday of affluence and idiosyncrasy as those who owned cars proudly drove on the (non-European) left. I cross Hlavna and come to a tall pink house where the great Hungarian revolutionary and poet Janos Batsanyi lived. The plaque to him was reworked between the wars so that Janos is now also commemorated as Jan Batsanyi, his Slovak name.