Uyvar Kalesi

Uyvar Kalesi (Hungarian: Ujvár) is a castle in the town of Nové Zámky in Slovakia which has not survived to the present day.

In various periods it remained in the hands of the Kingdom of Hungary, the Ottoman State and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The castle was built between 1573 and 1581 with the aim of defending Hungary against the Ottoman armies. The castle was built by the Italian architect Ottavio Giulio Baldigara in the form of a six-pointed star. The Ottomans besieged Uyvar Castle 6 times. In 1663, in the reign of Mehmed IV, an army under the command of Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha captured the castle. Austria was compelled to give the castle to the Ottomans by the Treaty of Vasvár. The castle and the town around it were organised by the Ottomans as the Eyalet of Uyvar. The castle remained in Ottoman hands for 22 years. In 1685 it was captured by the Austrian army under the command of Charles V, Duke of Lorraine. With the Treaty of Karlowitz signed in 1699 the castle formally passed out of Ottoman hands.

After this date the importance of the castle declined. Between 1724 and 1725 the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI had a large part of the castle demolished in order to prevent its being used as a refuge by Protestants. The remaining parts of the castle, and this town, were destroyed by bombing by Allied aircraft in 1944 during the Second World War. Today a very small part of Uyvar Castle is standing.

The expression "strong as a Turk" (Fr: Fort comme un Turc), used today in many Western languages, arose from the conquest of this castle, and its full form is "strong as a Turk before Uyvar" (Fr: Le front d'Uyvar est fort comme un Turc).

Machine-translated from “Uyvar Kalesi” on the Turkish Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Uyvar Kalesi ranks #6,169 of 8,134 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #89 of the 140 mapped in Slovakia. The nearest day-trip guide is Nitra, 37 km away. See how Slovakia compares in the castle statistics.

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Read the full history on Wikipedia (in Turkish) ↗