History
The prison of Miklusz in Košice is an assemblage of two gothic houses from the 13th / 14th century, rebuilt in the first half and then in the second half of the 15th century. Renovation of the building was needed after the desolation caused by the army of John Zápolya in 1536 and after the catastrophic fire of the town in 1556.. At the beginning of the 17th century, both houses were adapted to the needs of the town prison. For these purposes they served until 1909, and then the Museum of Upper Moravia administered them.
Architecture
The ground flooor walls and basements of gothic houses are 1.3 to 1.5 meters high. Large thickness suggests that the original houses from the 13th / 14th century had to be either high or have a tower character. Each of the houses was erected on a rectangular plan with dimensions of 16.3 x 10.9 meters; it had two or three floors with two rooms on each floor with an area of 60 and 32 m2, separated from each other with a staircase. The rooms had flat, timber ceilings, and the whole was topped with a gable roof covered with shingle. On the west side of the house was a massive turret measuring 3.8 x 6.6 meters.
After the reconstruction from the fifteenth century, the western house did not have such thick walls, so it is excluded that it could have a tower character. There were three rooms in the ground floor: an entry hall, a small kitchenette and an additional chamber. This layout was repeated on the first floor. The eastern tower house was transformed into a less massive form, but all ceilings were replaced, and the new rooms were more comfortable. In the second half of the fifteenth century windows of both buildings received late gothic window frames.
Current state
Currently, the gothic buildings house a branch of the East-Slovak Museum. The exhibitions present the history of the city of Košice and the appearance of a former prison with a torture chamber. In the last part of the exhibition, some of the underground rooms of the former torture chamber were made available for visitors, in which an exhibition of wax figures depicting hangman and his victims was also placed. A mini lapidarium was opened in the courtyard.
bibliography:
Website cassovia.sk, Miklušova väznica – osudy malebného dvojdomu.