Headquarters of the Spiš Chamber

The Chamber of Spis was a Hungarian government body operating under the control of the central bodies in Vienna in the Kingdom of Hungary. Its seat was in Košice. During the reign of Ferdinand I (between 1526 and 1564), the financial administration of the eastern parts of Hungary from Bratislava was difficult and slow due to transport conditions, wars with the Turks and the Transylvanian princes. In order to solve these problems, the ruler organized a separate administration to manage the affairs of the eastern parts of the country, with its seat in Prešov and then in Košice. From this, the Chamber of Spis was formed by 1567. Its organization corresponded to that of the Bratislava Chamber. Its jurisdiction extended to the counties east of Liptov and on and beyond the Tisza River. Its main task was to increase the income from mining and, in addition to other chamber duties, to perform the financial duties of the military administration. It exercised the right of supervision over the captains of the royal border castles in terms of salary payments, food and the entire castle economy together with the military authority, the captain-general of Košice. The chamber also took care of the construction and maintenance of the castles. It was dependent on the Bratislava and Court Chambers, but sometimes managed its affairs completely independently. ; In August 1935, during a reconstruction here, in the cellar of the former Spiš Chamber, a worker's pickaxe turned up a copper vessel from the ground, which was full of gold coins and other gold medals and a gold chain. The valuable find went down in history as the Košice gold treasure. The 2,920 gold coins, 84 percent of which are Hungarian and Dutch coins – including Czech, Silesian, Polish, German, Danish, Swedish, Italian, Austrian, Salzburg, Spanish coins, as well as an antique Thracian gold thaler from the 4th-3rd century BC – can be viewed in the armour exhibition hall of the Museum of Eastern Slovakia, as can the most valuable piece of copperware: the 590-gram, 214-cm late Renaissance gold chain, and the 1541 commemorative coin of Ferdinand I. It has not been revealed who could have hidden these treasures. Researchers have so far only agreed that the treasures were hidden immediately before Imre Thököly's expected entry into Košice. ; Only a small section remains of the medieval building in which the Chamber of Szepes operated from 1567 - when it was moved to Košice. The memorial plaque on the house reveals that János Batsányi also served as an official here in 1788-89.