Sivý Kameň Castle

Sivý Kameň Castle (Slovak: Hrad Sivý Kameň) – the ruins of a castle in the village of Podhradie in the district of Prievidza in Slovakia.

The castle was erected on an andesite hill undercut by the Ťapkov stream, on the border of the Upper Nitra Basin and the Vtáčnik mountain group. It probably arose in the second half of the 13th century (although some authors move the date of its construction to 1320-1352) as a royal watchpost, built to protect the trade route running up the Nitra valley to the Turiec Basin and further north towards the borders of Poland. At the foot of the castle an outer settlement arose, mentioned as a village as early as the 14th century. The first mention of the castle comes from 1352, when the lords of the castle in Bojnice, hitherto styled castellani de Baymocz, were already mentioned as castellani de Baymocz et Kesselőkő.

The original name in Hungarian (Kesselőkő) was to mean "vulture stone" (keselyű – vulture, kő – stone). The present Slovak name probably came from the light grey colour of its walls.

Until 1388 the castle was administered by the aforementioned castellans from Bojnice; later it changed owners several times. In 1434 King Sigismund granted it as a hereditary estate to Gregor Majthényi of Demandice. The castle became the seat of a small feudal "state". Burned in 1524, it was rebuilt and extended with the so-called lower castle by the Majthényis in the second half of the 16th century. It suffered fresh destruction during the anti-Habsburg uprising of Gabriel Bethlen in 1626, when the castle, captured by a detachment of General Mansfeld, was plundered most of all by the inhabitants of neighbouring Prievidza after his departure. Its owners then moved their seat to the kaštieľ in Nováky. At the beginning of the following century it was occupied by the kuruc troops of Francis II Rákóczi.

Machine-translated from “Zamek Sivý Kameň” on the Polish Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Sivý Kameň Castle ranks #7,964 of 8,133 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #128 of the 140 mapped in Slovakia. 6 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Banská Bystrica, 38 km away. See how Slovakia compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia (in Polish) ↗