page_title: Prešov
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Prešov / History
caption_attribution_description: County of Sáros in the pre-Trianon Kingdom of Hungary. Komitat Sáros w Królestwie Węgier przed traktatem w Trianon.
context_page_description: Prešov is a city in Eastern Slovakia. It is a seat of the administrative Prešov Region and Šariš as well as the historic Sáros County of the Kingdom of Hungary. With a population of approximately 89,000, it is the third-largest city in Slovakia. It lends its name to the Eperjes-Tokaj Hill-Chain. There are many tourist attractions in Prešov such as castles, pools and the old town.
context_section_description: Habitation in the area around Prešov dates as far back as the Paleolithic period. The oldest discovered tools and mammoth bones are 28,000 years old. Continuous settlement dates back to the 8th century.
  After the Mongol invasion in 1241, King Béla IV of Hungary invited German colonists to fill the gaps in population. Prešov became a German-speaking settlement, related to the Zipser German and Carpathian German areas, and was elevated to the rank of a royal free town in 1347 by Louis the Great.
  In 1412, Prešov helped to create the Pentapolitana, the league of five towns, a trading group. The first record of a school dates from 1429. After the collapse of the old Kingdom of Hungary after the Ottoman invasion of 1526, Prešov became a border city and changed hands several times between two usually rivalrous domains, Habsburg Royal Hungary and Hungarian states normally backed by the Ottomans: the Eastern Hungarian Kingdom, the Principality of Transylvania, and the Principality of Upper Hungary.
  Still, Prešov went through an economic boom thanks to trade with Poland. In the 16th century it brought in grape vines from the nearby Tokaj wine region, and was home to German-Hungarian, Polish and Greek wine merchants. Some of the first books on Tokaj wine were written in German in Prešov.
  In 1572, salt mining began in Solivar (at that time a nearby town, now part of Prešov).
  Antun Vrančić, a Croatian prelate, writer, diplomat and Archbishop of Esztergom, died in Prešov in 1573.
  Prešov was prominent in the Protestant Reformation. It was at the front line in the 1604–1606 Bocskai Uprising, when Habsburg commander Giorgio Basta retreated to the town after failing to take Košice from the Protestant rebels.
  In 1647 the Habsburgs designated it the capital of Sáros county. In late January 1657, Transylvanian Prince George II Rákóczi, a Protestant, invaded Poland with army of some 25,000 which crossed the Carpathians on the road from Prešov to Krosno.
  Wolfgang Schustel, a Lutheran reformer during the Reformation, who adopted an uncompromising position on public piety worked in Prešov and other towns. In 1667, the important Evangelical Lutheran College of Eperjes was established by Lutherans in the town.
  Imre Thököly, the Protestant Hungarian rebel and Ottoman ally studied at the Protestant college here. In 1685 he was defeated here by the Habsburg at the Battle of Eperjes. In 1687 twenty-four prominent citizens and noblemen were executed, under a tribunal instituted by the Austrian general Antonio Caraffa, for supporting the uprising of Imre Thököly:
  "The city particularly suffered during the religious conflicts of the seventeenth century, when it had a reputation for Protestant anti-Habsburg sentiment. In 1687, General Carafa, an emissary of the Austrian emperor, imprisoned a group of local noblemen suspected of insurrection in a former wine warehouse off the square now known as Caraffa's Prison. He subsequently, and notoriously, had 24 of them tortured, executed and their heads placed on spikes around the town, after what we would now call a show trial."
  At the beginning of the 18th century, the population was decimated by the Bubonic plague and fires and was reduced to a mere 2,000 inhabitants. By the second half of the century, however, the town had recovered; crafts and trade improved, and new factories were built. In 1752 the salt mine in Solivar was flooded. Since then salt has been extracted from salt brine through boiling.
  The English author John Paget visited Presov and describes it in his 1839 book Hungary and Transylvania. In 1870 the first railway line was built, connecting the town to Košice. At the end of the 19th century, the town introduced electricity, telephone, telegraph and a sewage systems. In 1887 fire destroyed a large part of the town.
  On 16 June 1919, the very brief Slovak Soviet Republic was declared here. In 1920, after the Treaty of Trianon, Eperjes became part of the newly created Czechoslovakia as Prešov. During World War II, the nearby town of Košice again became part of Hungary as a result of the First Vienn
caption: Map of Sáros county showing Prešov, named here as 'Eperjes'
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