The first written mention of the place comes in a deed of King Ladislaus IV in 1286. Be careful with what that sentence means: it is a fact about a document, not about when people arrived — they were living here long before anyone wrote it down. At that point the settlement was little more than a Catholic church and a few houses around it, and the church is why the town has its name at all: it was dedicated to Saint Nicholas, Mikuláš in Slovak. The church itself is first recorded in 1299 and still stands on the main square, an early Gothic building of about 1280–1300 raised on the site of an older Romanesque one. It is the oldest thing in town, and everything else grew around it.Prvá písomná zmienka o mieste pochádza z listiny kráľa Ladislava IV. z roku 1286. S tou vetou treba narábať opatrne: hovorí niečo o listine, nie o tom, kedy sem prišli ľudia — tí tu žili dávno predtým, než si to niekto zapísal. Vtedy tvoril osadu len rímskokatolícky kostol a zopár domov okolo neho — a práve kostol dal mestu meno: bol zasvätený svätému Mikulášovi. Sám kostol sa v prameňoch prvý raz spomína v roku 1299 a dodnes stojí na námestí; je to ranogotická stavba z rokov okolo 1280 – 1300, postavená na mieste staršieho románskeho kostola. Je to najstaršia stavba v meste a všetko ostatné narástlo okolo nej.
