Almașu Citadel

The Almașu Fortress near the village of Almașu, Sălaj, was built between 1247 and 1278 as one of the oldest and strongest medieval fortresses in Transylvania.

The fortress is first mentioned in 1370, when King Louis the Great donated it to Master Bebek György and his sons Imre and Detre, and to his grandsons György, László and Ferenc. During the 15th and 16th centuries the fortress was subjected to sieges arising from the conflicts between the Transylvanian nobility and the King of Hungary. During the Fifteen Years' War, General Basta besieged the fortress and offered its defenders their freedom in exchange for surrendering it, but Basta's soldiers ultimately massacred the inhabitants of the fortress.

Between 1545 and 1546 the fortress belonged to the Prince of Moldavia Petru Rareș.

Having fallen into ruin, the fortress was rebuilt only in 1627 by the Csaky noble family, but in 1662 it was again besieged and destroyed.

In 1658 the fortress suffered its last great siege and was occupied by the Tatars, who were coming from the direction of Cluj and heading towards the Meseș Gate. The besiegers enslaved the locals and set fire to the fortress, which this time remained in ruins.

The remaining ruins are listed in the 2004 List of Historic Monuments of Sălaj County at no. 324, code LMI SJ-II-a-A-05009, as the Almașu Fortress (ruins), 13th century; ref. 1627.

The ruins of the Almașu Fortress at Almașu, located 1500 m from the village, are also listed in the National Archaeological Repertory, bearing the code RAN 139991.03.

Machine-translated from “Cetatea Almașului” on the Romanian Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Almașu Citadel ranks #7,098 of 7,738 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #88 of the 115 mapped in Romania. 4 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Cluj-Napoca, 39 km away. It is one of the 75 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of Transylvania. See how Romania compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia (in Romanian) ↗