Kosice City Guide

Welcome to my latest Brume & Daisy travel series, featuring a Kosice City Guide. This is part of my most recent backpacking Europe series, in which I travelled from Berlin to Budapest by train and made loads of delightful little stops along the way. 

Kosice, Slovakia may not be a stop on everyone’s Euro trip, but if it makes sense for your route I would highly recommend a visit to Kosice or Slovakia in general. Slovakia is a beautiful country with breathtaking mountain ranges, gorgeous stately Old Towns, and loads of culture. When we visited (and loved!) Bratislava, we just knew Slovakia was a place we needed to explore more. 

Kosice is the second-largest city in Slovakia and it’s on the eastern side of the country. The train  from Ostrava to Kosice was gorgeous, we saw so many beautiful mountains! I can’t wait to dive in to all the gems Kosice had to offer. 

Kosice City Guide: Where to Stay

Hlavna Ulice is the main street through Old Town Kosice. This Old Town was beautifully preserved with stately buildings from loads of different architectural periods, Renaissance to Art Nouveau.

I recommend finding an AirBnb within walking distance of Hlavna. Bonus, it’s also an easy and picturesque walk from the central train station to Hlavna. In some big cities you exit the train station to find blocks and blocks of abandoned shops or a grungy mall, but in Kosice you walk through a flowering park with a foot bridge and a view of the mountains in the distance. It was lovely. 

Where to Eat & Drink in Kosice

POGO Urban Cafe – This was our coffee and sweets place in Kosice. It’s located on a bustling street that is perfect for sunny people watching, so we stopped here each morning for a slow morning espresso. After noting to each other a couple times that the sweets in the bakery display looked awfully good, we ended up back here for an afternoon sweet treat, and we were not disappointed!

Haluškáreň– This is a traditional Slovak cafe in the Old Town that serves old Slovak standards like bryndzove halušky, Slovak beer, and pies (pirohy). It’s inexpensive, unlike some restaurants that serve traditional food (just for the sake of snagging tourists), and the portions are huge. 

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Soup Culture – This stylish little cafe does vegetarian and vegan soups in edible bread “cones” — think Panera bread bowl but a more manageable size — which are perfect for take-out and eating on a park bench. They also do juices, sweets, vegan yogurt bowls, and that kind of thing. A great stop for a light lunch. 

PEPPE’s Košice -As you know, we own a pizza place back in the States, so we’re always on the hunt for good pizza when we travel. After doing quite a bit of research, we landed on Peppe’s and it was AMAZING. The owner, Chef Giuseppe, moved to Slovakia from Italy and brought his amazing recipes with him. We had the Rucola with salami added, and paired with a glass of Slovak red wine it was a perfect meal. 

Walk and Wander in Kosice

We spent most of our time in Kosice exploring the Old Town. There are loads of little cafes, galleries, and shops along both Hlavna Ulice and Hrnciarska Ulice. It’s compact and easy to get around. 

If you’d like a walk, head down the the Kulturpark. This is best described as a campus of museums and little art galleries, all surrounding a nice park with a cafe — a great people watching spot. 

Museums and Culture in Kosice

Kosice was the European Capital of Culture in 2013, which means there’s been a whole lot of recent investment into the arts and culture in the city. There are loads of art galleries, museums, and performance spaces. And the best part is, all the museums and galleries cost just 1 Euro for admission. Here are all the places we visited:

Lower Gate – Right in the center of the Old Town you’ll see these gates that appear to go underground. Kosice has an underground museum that is a preservation of the original city fortification, built in the 13th century. I’ve never seen anything like this — it’s a fun wander. 

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Kunsthalle – This building is a former Communist-era indoor swimming pool, turned art museum during the European Capital of Culture commission. Now it’s a visual arts museum and workshop space. We saw an Asot Haas exhibition, and it was incredible. 

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Tabacka Kulturefabrik – This is probably one of my favorite places in Kosice — every city needs a place like this. It’s a former tobacco factory turned into an massive alternative arts and culture campus. This space hosts concerts, theater, workshops and lectures, art exhibitions, films — you name it, there is something going on every day. There’s a music studio, co-working spaces, a cafe, and a big bistro/bar common space.  And every Wednesday night they do electronic house music with local DJs and there are people just tucked away everywhere hanging out. 

That’s all for now! 

I hope this is all you need to hear to consider Kosice on your next European tour — it is a seriously cool city. 

Until next time — let’s chat on Instagram or Twitter, where I’m @brumeanddaisy.

Want more of this backpacking tour? We also visited Berlin, Germany; Wrocław, Poland; Warsaw, Poland; Ostrava, Czech Republic; and Budapest, Hungary. Plus I have loads more guides and travel content here!