Cassovia: Superioris Hungariae Civitas Primaria/Košice: Capital City of Upper Hungary

Košice as the capital of Upper Hungary – the most representative and largest engraving of Košice until the nineteenth century

This copperplate engraving was prepared by Joris Hoefnagel (1542 Antwerp – †1600 Vienna) based on a drawing by Egidius van der Rye. The exhibited piece is a colored original from 1617, framed under museum-quality anti-reflective UV glass.

Copies of this engraving are also recorded in the collections of Slovak institutions — for example, in the Bratislava City Gallery (inv. no. C 7563) and in the East Slovak Museum in Košice (inv. no. K 10 923) — and can also be found in major international libraries, including the Library of Congress (Washington), the British Library (London), the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (Vienna), and the Országos Széchényi Könyvtár (Budapest), as well as in other library and museum collections and private collections.

Historical and architectural context

Košice is depicted in the engraving as a heavily fortified and politically important center of the eastern part of the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary. In 1617, it was the seat of the Captaincy of Upper Hungary, a defensive and administrative unit created to counter Turkish-Ottoman expansion. The city bore the designation Civitas Primaria and was the seat of the captain-general and the financial administration of the region, while Bratislava remained the capital of the entire kingdom.

The panorama is dominated by St. Elizabeth's Cathedral, the largest Gothic church in present-day Slovakia with a capacity of more than 5,000 worshippers. Its construction began in 1380 and continued in several stages until the beginning of the 16th century; construction work continued in the following periods until the beginning of the 17th century. In its immediate vicinity is Urban's Tower, a free-standing bell tower from the 16th century, which is clearly identifiable in the center of the city in the engraving.

The ethnic, cultural, and religious structure of the city is described in a report by the Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi from 1661, who mentions "Hungarians, Germans, and Upper Hungarians." The term Upper Hungarians also included the numerous Slavic population, although the term "Slovaks" was not yet used in its present-day sense at that time. The Chapel of St. Michael served as the "Slovak" church, while the Cathedral of St. Elizabeth was attended by Germans and Hungarians. 

The development of book printing in the wider region also belongs to this environment. In Bardejov, the activity of a printing house is documented as early as 1581, which published religious texts in "contemporary Slovak," meaning in biblical Czech used by Slovak Evangelicals as a liturgical and literary language. These are the oldest documented prints in the Slovak language in what is now Slovakia. These prints also spread to Košice and strengthened the cultural and religious ties of the Upper Hungarian region.