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KRASNA HORKA CASTLE
Krasna Horka castle is located in a picturesque valley of
the Slovak Ore mountains, on the summit of one conical hill about 4 Km from Roznava,
in the Gemer region of Slovakia. It is a Slovak National Cultural Monument. It
belongs to the castles that lived through the disappearance of the feudal
society well preserved. Today the castle tells us about the creators of the
values, of hard work and the smartness of the people of Gemer those build it
in very harsh social and working conditions.
Written materials mention the castle in
14th
century, however it's beginnings of the stone castle date back to 13th
century (1243-1318). In second half of the 14th century during the
ownership of Mariassy family several additional objects were build. It has
all typical elements of castle building from 14th century.
The area of Krasna Horka was owned by
Mariassy and Bebek
families. After 1578 family Andrassy becomes the third owner of the castle.
The historic collections at the castle are of great value
and already in 1857 they were made accessible to public on special occasions.
Most interesting parts of the castle’s museum are rooms
with original furnishings such as the castle's kitchen, display of arms,
small music room as a remembrance of the castle musicians. The jail cells and
torture rooms with torture instruments are reminder of the owners powers. In
the living quarters of the middle castle are numerous artifacts from Gemer's
past, which represent the history of the castle. Former conference room of the
county congregations with large table and leather covered chairs of different
seat heights. The reason for the different heights of chairs was for the
negotiating gentlemen to have their heads at the same level in one line thus
confirm their equality at these negotiations. The most valuable piece of the
collection is big ornamental closet from end of 17th century, made
somewhere in Spis region. It was a gift of Frantisek Rakoczi to the then
owner of the castle Zofia Seredi. To me the most interesting artifacts were the leather buckets used to
draw water from the castle’s well. The well wasn't cut straight down and
by drawing water in metal buckets, most of it got spilled before it reached
surface so they changed the metal buckets to leather ones as they would mold
to the walls of the wells. Second most interesting artifact was the sword of
Palatin Jan Zapolsky at one time the vice King of Hungary. He was the
owner of Spis Castle.
GO
TO SLOVAKIA'S CASTLES
Published in the
Slovak Heritage Live newsletter Volume 5, No. 4, Winter 1997
Copyright © Vladimir Linder 1997
3804
Yale Street, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5C 1P6
The above article and photographs may not be copied,
reproduced, republished, or redistributed by any means including electronic,
without the express written permission of
Vladimir
Linder. All rights
reserved.
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