Bratislava Castle
Bratislava Castle is the main castle of Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. The massive rectangular building with four corner towers stands on an isolated rocky hill of the Little Carpathians, directly above the Danube river, in the middle of Bratislava. Because of its size and location, it has been a dominant feature of the city for centuries.
The location provides excellent views of Bratislava, Austria and, in clear weather, parts of Hungary. Many legends are connected with the history of the castle.
Castle site
The following are at the castle site:Castle building
The castle building includes four towers and a courtyard with an deep water well. The largest and tallest tower is the Crown Tower, on the southwest corner. The tower dates from the 13th century and for approximately 200 years, beginning in the mid-1500s, housed the crown jewels of Hungary. The exterior walls and inside corridors contain fragments of old Gothic and Renaissance construction elements. The walled-up entrance gate from the 16th century is still visible to the east of the main hall/entrance.Museum
Behind the entrance is an arcade corridor leading to a large Baroque staircase which, in turn, leads to the exhibitions of the Slovak National Museum on the second floor. The west wing of this floor houses the four halls of the Treasure Chamber, with a collection of the most precious archaeological finds and other objects of Slovakia, including the prehistoric statue called the Venus of Moravany. The third floor houses an exhibition on the history of Slovakia. The first floor in the south wing of the building houses the rooms of Slovak parliament —the National Council of the Slovak Republic—including furnishings from the 16th century. The northern wing of the building, the former Baroque chapel, houses the Music Hall, in which concerts are held. The courtyard includes the entrance to the Knights Hall.Entrance gates
- Sigismund Gate in the southeast—the best-preserved original part of the site, built in the 15th century
- Vienna Gate in the southwest—built in 1712
- Nicholas Gate in the northeast—built in the 16th century
- Leopold Gate
Other buildings
Inside the Sigismund Gate and below the Court of Honor is the Leopold Yard with bastions, constructed in the 17th century.
To the east of the castle building, the constellation of the Great Moravian basilica, the Church of St Savior, and other early medieval objects is indicated on the ground. The true archaeological findings are directly below this indicated constellation.
Adjacent to the Nicholas Gate, a Gothic gateway from the 15th century in the northeast quadrant, is the Lugiland Bastion. This is a long three-floor building from the 17th century that currently houses the National Council of the Slovak Republic and a Baroque stable. A French baroque garden is located to the south of the stable.
The northern border of the site is formed by a long Baroque building from the 18th century, which today houses the Slovak National Museum and the castle administration.
History
Prehistory (2800–450 BC)
The castle's site, like today's city, has been inhabited for thousands of years, because it is strategically located in the center of Europe at a passage between the Carpathians and the Alps, at an important ford used to cross the Danube river, and at an important crossing of central European ancient routes running from the Balkans or the Adriatic Sea to the Rhine river or the Baltic Sea, the most important route being the Amber Route.The people of the Boleráz culture were the first known culture to have constructed settlements on the castle hill. This happened around 3500 BC. Their "castle" was a fortified settlement and a kind of acropolis for settlements in today's Old Town of Bratislava.
Further major findings from the castle hill are from the Hallstatt Period. At that time, the people of the Kalenderberg Culture constructed a building plunged into the rock of the castle hill. Again, the "castle" served as an acropolis for settlements found in the western part of the Old Town.
Celts and Romans (450 BC – 5th century AD)
During the La Tène Period, the castle hill became an important center of the Celts. In the last century BC, it served as the acropolis of an oppidum of the Celtic Boii. A great number and diversity of findings testifies to this.The castle hill, which was situated at the Danube and thus since 9 BC at the border of the Roman Empire, was also settled by the Romans during the Roman Period, as findings of bricks of Roman legions and some parts of architecture suggest.
The developments in the 5th century are largely unclear.
Slavs, Nitrian Principality, Great Moravia (500–907)
The situation changed with the arrival of the Slavs in the territory of Bratislava. Initially, they partly used older Roman and Celtic structures and added some fortifications. Probably at the end of the 8th century , at the time of the Principality of Nitra, a Slavic castle with a wooden rampart was constructed, with a huge area of 55,000 square metres. In the second half of the 9th century, at the time of Great Moravia, a palace of stone surrounded by dwellings and a big basilica were added.The basilica is the largest Great Moravian basilica from the territory of Slovakia, and the area of the castle is approximately the same as that of the Mikulčice site, which is the most important Great Moravian archaeological site.
Material from old Roman buildings was used to construct this Slavic castle in Bratislava. This could be a confirmation of the disputed statement of Aventinus from the 16th century, who—referring to lost sources—claimed that around 805/7, the Great Moravian prince Uratislaus constructed today's Bratislava at the place of a destroyed Roman frontier fort called Pisonium, and the new settlement was named after him, Uratislaburgium/Wratisslaburgium. Another probable fact is that around 900, the castle and the territory it controlled was given in fief to Predslav, the third son of the Great Moravian king Svatopluk I and that Pre slav, or a person of the same name, is the person after which the castle and the town received its old German name Pressburg.
The oldest version of this name was Preslava / Preslav sburg. It appeared for the first time in 907 in the forms Brezalauspurc, Braslavespurch, and Pressalauspruch, and then around 1000 on Hungarian coins as Preslav a Civitas. On the other hand, the exact location of Brezalauspurc is still disputed.
High and Late Middle Ages (907–1531)
The construction of a new castle of stone started in the 10th century, but work lagged. Under King Stephen I of Hungary, however, the castle was already one of the central castles of the Kingdom of Hungary. It became the seat of Pozsony county and protected the kingdom against Bohemian and German attacks and played an important role in throne struggles, such as the one following the death of Stephen I. In 1052, Henry III tried to occupy the castle. According to Hungarian tradition, Zotmund, a Hungarian soldier, swam to the ships of the invading fleet to drill holes in them, and they were sunk. King Solomon of Hungary had lived here until he was taken to the jail of Nitra, according to Ladislaus I's order. At the same time, the old rampart was modernized, and the Church of the St. Savior, with a chapter and a church school, were added. Stephen III of Hungary escaped from his enemies to the castle almost 100 years later.The castle was turned into a proto-Romanesque palace of stone in the 12th century, possibly because Béla III decided to make Esztergom the definitive seat of kings of Hungary. It was a palace similar to those constructed in Germany under Friedrich Barbarossa. In 1182, Friedrich Barbarossa gathered his crusader army under the castle. The church institutions and building at the castle were moved to the town below the castle in the early 12th century.
The well-fortified Pressburg castle was among the few in the Kingdom of Hungary to be able to withstand Mongol attacks in 1241 and 1242. As a reaction to these attacks, a huge "tower for the protection of the kingdom" was constructed at the castle building in 1245, immediately next to two older palaces. The tower was actually a huge residential building. In addition, seven square towers were built into the old rampart, and a stone wall was added around the castle proper. The biggest of the rampart towers was at the same time a corner tower of the stone wall. Today, it is part of the castle building—it is identical to the present-day "crown tower", which is the largest of the four existing towers of the structure. It was probably built around 1250, when the Knights of St. John were active at the castle.
On 25 October 1265, the Czech king, Přemysl Otakar, and the Hungarian king Béla IV's grandchild Kunigunde, were engaged here. Andrew II and Gertrude's daughter, Elisabeth was born here. The new castle faced further conflicts. In 1271, king Otakar II of Bohemia invaded Hungarian territory and charged the knight Egid with the administration of the conquered castle. Egid rebelled two years later and was defeated, but due to problems in Bohemia, Otakar had to leave this territory. In 1285–86, the noble Nicholas Kőszegi occupied the castle in order to use it as a basis for a rebellion against the Hungarian king, but he was defeated. Shortly afterwards, in 1287–1291, the Austrian duke Albert of Habsburg, supporting Nicholas, occupied the castle but was defeated by Matthew III Csák, who was made head of Pozsony county. A successful Austrian occupation of the castle and the county occurred in 1302–1312/1322 by Duke Rudolf.
As a result of this permanent fighting, the Hungarian king granted the city rights to a part of the settlements below the castle in 1291, thereby withdrawing them from the authority of the county head in the castle. Some settlements on the castle hill remained under the castle's authority, and the fortification was gradually extended to them.
In 1385, king Sigismund of Luxembourg occupied the castle and Pozsony county and one year later put the county in pawnage to his cousins, the Moravian margraves Prokop and Jošt, in exchange for a loan. The castle was reconquered by Stibor of Stiboricz in 1389, who was made the head of Pozsony county in 1389–1402 as a reward. He had a chapel built in Bratislava Castle.
Another ally of king Sigismund, especially in his fights against the Czech Hussites, was the noble family Rozgonyi, which received the Pozsony county head function in 1421. At some point between 1420 and 1430, Sigismund decided to make Bratislava Castle –due to its central location —the center of his new German-Czech-Hungarian empire. In 1423, the king ordered the Rozgonyis to improve the fortifications of the castle as a protection against Hussite attacks, because it was situated close to the Czech border and was only protected by the old wooden ramparts. This was replaced with a stone bulwark. Between 1431 and 1434, a total rearrangement of Pressburg castle took place. Experts from Germany were invited, material was transported from Austria, and towns were imposed special taxes specifically for the construction of the largest castle ever built. The construction master was Konrad von Erlingen. The residential "tower" was demolished, and the form of the new Gothic palace was approximately similar to that of the present-day castle. Today, the only completely preserved part of the castle from that time is the Sigismund Gate, i.e., the eastern entrance gate in the bulwark. Smaller parts have been preserve in the main palace. Sigismund's plans, however, did not materialize, because the castle never became his residence, and he remained in the town below the castle.
After Sigismund's death in 1437, his widow, Barbara of Celje, was imprisoned in the castle by the new king, Albert of Habsburg. In 1438, Albert's daughter, Anne, was engaged to the margrave William III, Landgrave of Thuringia in the castle. John Hunyadi and his wife Erzsébet Szilágyi also stayed here. Later on, Ladislas the Posthumous possibly lived in the castle. In 1440–1443, there was fighting between Pressburg Castle, ruled by county heads from the Rozgonyi family and the town of Pressburg itself. Castle repairs were conducted in 1438, 1452, and 1463. A water well was constructed in the yard of the castle in the 15th century.