Kamianets-Podilskyi Castle

Kamianets-Podilskyi Castle stands where nature did half the work. The Smotrych River loops almost all the way around a limestone plateau, cutting a deep canyon, and the old town sits on that near-island. The castle guards the one narrow neck of land and the bridge that joins it to the mainland, making it one of the most dramatic fortress settings in Europe. It is also among the few medieval strongholds in Ukraine to survive in reasonably complete form.

Written records place the castle in the mid-14th century, when the region was held by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; a 1374 charter from Prince Yuriy Koriatovych granting the town Magdeburg rights mentions it. Excavations in the 1960s suggest a fortification here as early as the late 12th or early 13th century. Over the following centuries the Polish crown made it the eastern bulwark of the kingdom: around 1400 the governor Spytek of Melsztyn renovated old towers and added ten new ones, and in the 16th century the military engineer Hiob Bretfus added new towers, the eastern wall and an underground gallery. The complex that resulted has two parts, the Old Castle facing the town and the New Castle, built for the age of artillery.

It was tested constantly. Tatar raids struck it 51 times between the 15th and 17th centuries, and Cossack forces besieged it during the Khmelnytsky Uprising. In August 1672 an Ottoman army under Sultan Mehmed IV forced its surrender, and for 27 years it was the seat of Ottoman rule in Podolia, returning to Poland under the treaty of 1699. The siege inspired Henryk Sienkiewicz's novel Pan Wołodyjowski. From the 18th century the fortress served mostly as a prison; the peasant rebel Ustym Karmaliuk, a Ukrainian folk hero, was held in the Pope's Tower. It became a protected historic reserve in 1928 and a museum, and the castle and old town have been on Ukraine's tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage since 1989. In 2011 a storm brought down part of the New Western Tower.

Today the castle is part of the National Historical-Architectural Reserve "Kamianets" and the city's defining landmark, with towers, walls, courtyards and exhibitions open to visitors.

Getting there

The castle sits at the edge of Kamianets-Podilskyi's old town in western Ukraine. The nearest practical airport is Suceava (SCV) in Romania, about 110 km away across the border. The city has had a railway link since 1914.