East Slovak Museum

The East Slovak Museum is the principal museum of the Košice region, occupying a handsome Historicist building on Hlavná ulica. The collections cover the natural history, archaeology, and cultural history of eastern Slovakia from the Neolithic through to the modern period. The permanent exhibits include prehistoric artefacts, Roman-era finds, and a significant collection of Slovak folk art and craft.

The main draw, however, is the Košice Gold Treasure — a hoard of medieval gold coins and jewellery displayed in a specially built vault. The scale of the treasure is impressive; the sheer number of coins laid out in display cases gives a visceral sense of the wealth that circulated through this region in the late medieval period. The museum also has a natural history section with a good collection of local minerals from the Carpathian region. Allow about 90 minutes.

things to do museum
A story
In 1935, workers excavating foundations for a new building in central Košice uncovered a clay pot containing 2,920 gold coins from the 15th and 16th centuries, along with 160 pieces of gold plate and chain jewellery. The Košice Gold Treasure — as it is now known — represents one of the largest medieval gold hoards ever found in Europe. Nobody knows who hid it or why it was never recovered. The collection is now the centrepiece exhibit of the East Slovak Museum and fills a dedicated vault room that draws visitors from across Slovakia.