History of Kežmarok

Dear ladies and gentlemen,

welcome to the town Kežmarok, which has very rich history. Kežmarok is situated near the highest mountain of Slovakia – the High Tatras.
Kežmarok has more than 150 kinds of the original name of the town. The most widespread opinion is, that the word Kežmarok comes from the german origin and it means „Cheese market“.
First written mention comes from the year 1251. In the past it was the second important town of the large triangle of historical Spiš, besides Levoča and Sp. Sobota. The old town consisted of 4 settlements: st. Michael, Holy Cross, st. Elisabeth and st. Peter and Paul.
The oldest of them was the slavonic settlement of st. Michael. It lied on the hill above the train station. The next village was the settlement of fishermen which was situated in the area of the church of the Holy Cross.
In the second half of 12th century came to Kežmarok german colonists, who were invited by the King Belo IV. after the Tatars withdrawal. They established the settlement of st. Elisabeth on the edge of the town. In 1380 Kežmarok became a free royal town. What does it mean ´free royal town´? It meant, that the town had only one boss – it was the King - and the Kings were very generous to their town. It was also given the right of the sword in 1438 by King Zigmund. King Matej granted the town a coat-of-arms. The coat-of-arms is divided into two parts. In its upper part there are 2 crossed silver swords with a gold royal crown and a heraldic rose. The lower part is formed by 2 silver and 2 red stripes, which are symbolizing 4 rivers of Kežmarok – Poprad, Zlatník, Biela voda and Ľubický potok. The 16th century meant a decline for Kežmarok. Sebastián Thokoly became the owner of the town and its castle. After thesuppresion of anti-royal Habsburg uprising Thokolys castle was cofiscated and in 1720 it became the property of the town.
There were more than 40 guilds in Kežmarok in the 16th century. The most important of them were shoemakers, butchers, locksmiths and brewers. The guilds were out of operation when first factories appeared. The first factory in Kežmarok was small flax weaving mill-at present it is Tatraľan.
Nowadays, Kežmarok is the district town with more than 20000 inhabitants and it belongs to the biggest and nicest towns in the Spiš region. Thank you for your attention, if you have any questions, I will be glad to answer it.