Bojnice Castle

Bojnice Castle in central Slovakia looks like a fairy-tale illustration dropped onto a Carpathian hillside: a cluster of steep pointed roofs, turrets, battlements and a tall central tower rising above the treetops at the edge of the spa town of Bojnice. It is in fact a very old castle wearing a nineteenth-century costume. The site is first recorded in 1113, in a document of the Zobor Abbey near Nitra; in 1302 it passed to Matthew Csák, the magnate who ruled much of present-day Slovakia, and in 1528 to the Thurzó family, the richest clan of northern Hungary, who turned it into a Renaissance residence. From 1646 it belonged to the Pálffy family, and it was the last of them to own it who gave it its present face.

Count Ján František Pálffy (1829–1908), a passionate and eccentric art collector, rebuilt the castle between 1889 and 1910 as a romantic dream of medieval France, taking the château country of the Loire and Gothic architecture of France and Italy as his models. The architect Jozef Hubert was nominally in charge, but Pálffy designed and directed much of the work himself, down to the interiors meant to show off his collection. The rooms include the Golden Hall, and an older Baroque chapel with remarkable stucco vaulting survives within the complex.

The castle's greatest treasure is the Bojnice Altarpiece, a polyptych of ten panels painted in the fourteenth century by the Florentine master Nardo di Cione, which Pálffy found in an antiques shop and for which he built a chapel. Below the fourth courtyard lies a natural travertine cave, about 22 metres across and 6 metres high, rediscovered during the reconstruction in 1888. In the park stands the Linden Tree of King Matthias, some 700 years old and one of the oldest documented trees in Slovakia; tradition says the king signed his decrees beneath it.

A fire on 9 May 1950 destroyed the central towers, which were restored within a year, and the castle opened as a museum in 1951. It draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year and hosts an International Festival of Ghosts and Spirits, when the rooms are staged with costumed apparitions. Slovakia's oldest zoo lies close by.

Getting there

The castle stands above the town of Bojnice, about 4 km from Prievidza, the district town. The nearest airport is Sliač Airport (SLD), about 44 km away.