page_title: St Elisabeth Cathedral
section_title: The North portal
hierarchical_section_title: St Elisabeth Cathedral / Exterior / The North portal
caption_attribution_description: English: North portal of St Elisabeth Cathedral in Košice
context_page_description: The Cathedral of St Elisabeth is a Gothic cathedral in Košice.
  It is Slovakia's largest church and one of the easternmost Gothic cathedrals in Europe.
  The record of the existence of Kassa, dating from 1230, is connected with the existence of the rectory church. In the process of the settlement's transformation from a rural community into a town, all its periods of successes and failures have been reflected in St Elisabeth's Cathedral.
  According to historical and archaeological sources, the present-day cathedral was built on the place of an earlier church also consecrated to St Elisabeth of Hungary. It was referred to in documents of 1283 and 1290, in which the bishop of Eger Andrew II exempted Košice parish from the dean's sphere of jurisdiction.
context_section_description: Design of the north portal is rare according to medieval tradition in which the north sides of churches did not have portals. Its statues are the most decorative out of the three portals of the cathedral. The reason for this is probably its facing the busiest part of medieval Košice-to the city market and the city hall. The portal is known as The Golden Gate, because it was gilded in the Middle Ages. The north portal has two entrance doors. Above those is an arch with a relief of The Last Judgement.
  The relief is divided into two parts. In the lower one is seen a crowd of people heading to the gates of heaven, where they are welcomed by an angel, and the others who are going to hell are heading to the leviathan's jaws with devils and are in chains. The upper part shows the Last Judgement, the two angels with horns announcing the end of the world. The other figures represent the 12 apostles. Around the relief of the Last Judgement is in three degrees placed five frame reliefs decorated by pinnacles, profilation and traceried motives. Two lower reliefs refer to the life of St Elisabeth. The other three recreate the scene from Calvary.
  At the top is Christ crucified on the cross in a shape of tree of life. The other two crucified on Golgotha are shown on the left side as the saved soul carried to heaven by an angel, while on the right side the soul is carried to hell by a devil. Under the scene of Crucifixion on the left side are crying women around Virgin Mary under the cross and on the right side is John the Evangelist surrounded by Roman soldiers. During the great reconstruction of the dome they added niches along the both gates of north portal for Neo-gothic statues of the saints.
  The niches are original and it is not known what statues stood on them during the last centuries. The other Neo-Gothic statues decorate the portal of the east gavel. The statues are Ugarian kings Charles I of Hungary, his wife Elisabeth of Poland and Louis of Hungary. They are masterpieces of the Budapest sculptor Lajos Lantay.
caption: The north portal
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