Kisnána is a village in
Heves county
Heves county ( hu, Heves megye, ) lies in northern Hungary, between the right bank of the river Tisza and the Mátra and Bükk mountains. It shares borders with the Hungarian counties Pest, Nógrád, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén and Jász-Nagykun-S ...
,
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...
, located from
Gyöngyös
Gyöngyös (; german: Gengeß) is a town in Heves county in Hungary, east of Budapest. Situated at the foot of the Sár-hegy and Mátra mountains, it is the home of numerous food production plants, including milk production and sausage factories ...
to the northeast.
There is a castle in the village that was built in the 11th or 12th century.
Sightseeing for visitors
The village has an interesting assembly of buildings worth visiting. There is the old castle and the old
Árpád
Árpád (; 845 – 907) was the head of the confederation of the Magyar tribes at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries. He might have been either the sacred ruler or ''kende'' of the Hungarians, or their military leader or '' gy ...
age church inside the castle.
Castle
In the Árpád age the region was in the possession of the Aba Genus, who was related to the king of Hungary. The leader of the Genus,
Aba Sámuel married the sister of
king Saint Stephen. In 1044 Aba Sámuel became
King of Hungary
The King of Hungary ( hu, magyar király) was the ruling head of state of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1000 (or 1001) to 1918. The style of title "Apostolic King of Hungary" (''Apostoli Magyar Király'') was endorsed by Pope Clement XIII in 1758 ...
. Later descendants of the Genus were smaller families and one of them, the Kompolti family became the landowner of Kisnána. Kompolti János built the first part of the castle, as mentioned in the charters from 1445 about the „castrum” (fortress). In 1521 the landowner of the castle was István Losonczy who defended Temesvár against the Türks. The last owner was László Móré, who alternately supported the two kings of the early Turkish times: János Szapolyai or Habsburg Ferdinánd. But the Turks defeated him and László Móré died in the prison of Seven Towers in Istanbul, capital of the Osman Turk Empire.
Church
In the old castle of the Kompolti family there is another, even older architectural heritage building from the early Árpád ages. It is a gothic church, originally built in the romanesque style. The excavations of the ruins of this church revealed the foundations of an ancient rotunda. Originally this rotunda had been built first on the hill and later it was gradually extended. When the Kompolti family surrounded it by walls, they developed it as the castle-church and rebuilt it finally in the gothic style in the 14th century.
Sources
* Gerő, L. (1984): Magyar műemléki ABC. (Hungarian Architectural Heritage ABC.) Budapest
* Gervers-Molnár, V. (1972): A középkori Magyarország rotundái. (Rotunda in the Medieval Hungary). Akadémiai, Budapest
* Henszlmann, I. (1876): ''Magyarország ó-keresztyén, román és átmeneti stylü mű-emlékeinek rövid ismertetése'', (Old-Christian, Romanesque and Transitional Style Architecture in Hungary). Királyi Magyar Egyetemi Nyomda, Budapest
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kisnana
Populated places in Heves County
Romanesque architecture in Hungary