The oldest coat of arms in Europe
Location: Hlavná Street, at the Lower gate, Košice.
When King Louis the Great of Anjou issued a document, awarding the city the privilege to use its own coat of arms in the castle Diősgyőri on May 7, 1369. He did not expect to create such a complicated heraldic situation for his successors. The coat of arms of Košice went through a very interesting development. When creating it, Louis used the royal and Anjou coats of arms. He added the upper blue field with the three golden lilies to the four horizontal silver cross-bars in the red field. However, he did not solve the appearance of the jewel and covers. The city solved it itself, by means of their imagination and used a person of an angel, the shield-carrier.
Only after 55 years the coat of arms was modified to reach this appearance officially, by Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg, who issued a normal official document certifying the coat of arms, in Bratislava on January 31, 1423. The angel holding the coat of arms shield had beautiful red clothes, which were replaced with light blue by King Ladislaus Posthumus thirty years later, on February 7, 1453.
