Uzhhorod Castle ( uk, Ужгородський замок; hu, Ungvári vár) is an extensive

citadel A citadel is the core fortified area of a town or city. It may be a castle, fortress, or fortified center. The term is a diminutive of "city", meaning "little city", because it is a smaller part of the city of which it is the defensive core. In ...

on a hill in

Uzhhorod Uzhhorod ( uk, У́жгород, , ; ) is a city and municipality on the river Uzh in western Ukraine, at the border with Slovakia and near the border with Hungary. The city is approximately equidistant from the Baltic, the Adriatic and the B ...

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

. It was built in a mixture of architectural styles and materials between the 13th and 18th centuries and figured heavily in the history of

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 ...

. The very name of Uzhhorod/Ungvár refers to the castle, translating as "the

Uzh The Uzh ( uk, Уж; translit. ''Uzh''; sk, Uh; hu, Ung, pl, Uż) is a river in Ukraine and Slovakia. Its name comes from the ancient west Slavic dialect word ''už'', meaning "Snake", (lat. "Serpentes"). The Uzh is a tributary of the Labore ...

castle". The earliest stone buildings on the site of the castle may be dated to the 13th century.

Charles I of Hungary Charles I, also known as Charles Robert ( hu, Károly Róbert; hr, Karlo Robert; sk, Karol Róbert; 128816 July 1342) was King of Hungary and Croatia from 1308 to his death. He was a member of the Capetian House of Anjou and the only son of ...

gave the castle grounds to his Italian supporters from the

Drugeth The House of Drugeth was a powerful noble family (of French origin) of the Kingdom of Hungary in the 14th to 17th centuries whose possessions were located in the northeastern parts of the kingdom. The ancestors of the family left Apulia (Southern ...

family. They erected a rectangular defensive structure with rhomboid

bastion A bastion or bulwark is a structure projecting outward from the curtain wall of a fortification, most commonly angular in shape and positioned at the corners of the fort. The fully developed bastion consists of two faces and two flanks, with fi ...

s that recalled the castles of South Italy. The fortification, augmented in the 16th and 17th centuries, underwent numerous sieges (the last one by

Francis II Rákóczi Francis II Rákóczi ( hu, II. Rákóczi Ferenc, ; 27 March 1676 – 8 April 1735) was a Hungarian nobleman and leader of Rákóczi's War of Independence against the Habsburgs in 1703–11 as the prince ( hu, fejedelem) of the Estates Confedera ...

in 1703-04) but was never taken. In the 18th century, it was modernised under the supervision of Lemaire, a military engineer from France.Памятники градостроительства и архитектуры Украинской ССР. Киев: Будивельник, 1983—1986. Том 2, с. 160. As the male line of the Drugeth family died out in 1691, Kristina Drugeth, heiress to the vast Drugeth dominions, married Count

Miklós Bercsényi Miklós () is a given name or surname, the Hungarian language, Hungarian form of the Greek (English ''Nicholas''), and may refer to: In Hungarian politics * Miklós Bánffy, Hungarian nobleman, politician, and novelist * Miklós Horthy, Regent of ...

, making him the third richest man in Hungary.

Paul Robert Magocsi Paul Robert Magocsi (born January 26, 1945 in Englewood, New Jersey) is an American professor of history, political science, and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto. He has been with the university since 1980, and became a Fe ...

, Ivan Pop. ''Encyclopaedia of Rusyn History and Culture''. University of Toronto Press, 2002. . Page 515. Bercsényi, remembered as a key figure in Rákóczi's War for Independence, resided in the fortified palace within the castle. It was there that he treated with the ambassadors of

Peter the Great Peter I ( – ), most commonly known as Peter the Great,) or Pyotr Alekséyevich ( rus, Пётр Алексе́евич, p=ˈpʲɵtr ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪtɕ, , group=pron was a Russian monarch who ruled the Tsardom of Russia from t ...

and

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Vers ...

concerning the establishment of an anti-Habsburg alliance. In 1711, Bercsényi fled Hungary and his estates were confiscated to the

Austrian crown The crown (german: Krone, hu, korona, it, Corona, pl, korona, sl, krona, sh, kruna, cz, koruna, sk, koruna, ro, coroană) was the official currency of Austria-Hungary from 1892 (when it replaced the florin as part of the adoption of the ...

. As the need for a military stronghold in the area declined with the extension of the

Habsburg The House of Habsburg (), alternatively spelled Hapsburg in Englishgerman: Haus Habsburg, ; es, Casa de Habsburgo; hu, Habsburg család, it, Casa di Asburgo, nl, Huis van Habsburg, pl, dom Habsburgów, pt, Casa de Habsburgo, la, Domus Hab ...

dominions further to the east, Ungvár Castle was given over to the

Ruthenian Greek-Catholic Church The Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church ( rue, Русиньска ґрекокатолицька церьков; la, Ecclesia Graeco-Catholica Ruthenica), also known in the United States simply as the Byzantine Catholic Church, is an Eastern Catho ...

which opened a school there. In 1728 and 1879, fire ravaged the castle grounds. У дворi Ужгородського замку 02.jpg, Uzhhorod-castle-main-building.jpg, Priest House Uzhhorod 2.jpg, Ужгородський замок (5).jpg,

References

External links

*
Transcarpathian museum of regional studies
{{Authority control Uzhhorod Castles in Ukraine

Castle A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified r ...