Corvin Castle (Hunedoara)
A Gothic castle with towers and a drawbridge, one of the largest castles in Europe.
About
Corvin Castle stands on a rock above a river in the town of Hunedoara, a cluster of steep red roofs, towers, bastions and balconies reached by a long wooden bridge. It looks like a fairy-tale fortress and has often appeared in films.
Inside are a Knights’ Hall, a Diet Hall, a chapel and a Neboisa Tower, along with exhibitions on the castle’s past, and its dark corners are the setting for many legends. There is also a deep well said to have been dug by prisoners. Allow about two hours.
History
The castle was begun in the early fifteenth century on the site of an older fortress, and it grew into its present form under John Hunyadi, a Hungarian-Romanian noble and military leader whose family received the estate from King Sigismund in 1409. Hunyadi was a key commander against the Ottomans in the fifteenth century, serving as regent of Hungary, and he rebuilt it in Gothic style from about 1446 with Italian and local craftsmen. His son Matthias Corvinus, later king of Hungary, inherited it, and the family emblem of a raven, in Latin corvus, gives the castle its name. Over the following centuries it passed through several owners and was used as a prison and an ironworks storehouse. It was extensively restored from the late nineteenth century and in the twentieth, which added some romantic decorative elements. A local legend says Vlad the Impaler was held captive here for some years in the 1450s, although this is uncertain.