Orava Castle
Oravský hrad
Interesting facts
- The castle is first mentioned in writing in 1267, when it came into the hands of King Béla IV of Hungary.
- By 1298 the castle was held by Matthew Csák of Trenčín, one of the most powerful magnates of the Hungarian kingdom.
- In 1556 Francis Thurzó bought the castle for 18,338 gold pieces, and his son György later secured the family's permanent ownership.
- Francis Thurzó had a well sunk into the rock in the mid-16th century, reported to be about 90 metres deep.
- In 1672 rebellious peasants occupied the castle, and in 1703 it was seized by the insurgent army of Francis II Rákóczi.
- After 1626 the castle was owned jointly by the Thurzó heirs through a shared estate body known as the Orava Compossessorate.
- Part of the middle castle was restored between 1906 and 1912 under Count József Pálffy.
- Besides Nosferatu, the castle appeared in the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and in the 2000 film Dragonheart: A New Beginning.
Why it is worth it
Orava Castle seems to grow straight out of its rock. The buildings climb a narrow cliff in three tiers, with the highest point 112 metres above the Orava river and the village of Oravský Podzámok in northern Slovakia. A fortified site already existed on the rock. After the Mongol invasion of Hungary in 1241, the Hungarian kingdom built a castle there to guard the trade road to Poland, and from 1370 the castle was the seat of Árva county. The upper castle came first. King Matthias Corvinus added buildings in the middle castle after 1474, and in the 1530s and 1540s John of Dubovec added a five-storey palace and round cannon bastions against the Ottoman threat. The Thurzó mining family then shaped much of the complex, and its present form was complete by 1611.
A great fire in 1800 destroyed every wooden part of the castle, and it never served as a residence again. The middle and upper castles were rebuilt in the 1860s, and in 1868 the first exhibition of a regional museum opened in the Thurzó palace. The museum is one of the oldest in Slovakia. The castle was restored again in 1953–1968 and is a national cultural monument.
Film has spread its fame. In 1922 F. W. Murnau used Orava for much of Count Orlok's Transylvanian castle in Nosferatu. It has since stood in for Dracula's castle again, in the 2020 BBC series, and it helped inspire the witchers' fortress Kaer Morhen in the Witcher video games. A tour climbs from the lower castle through tunnels and stairways cut into the rock. It passes the Knights' Hall, the chapel with György Thurzó's Renaissance tomb and a Baroque altar of 1751–1752, furnished period rooms, an armoury and a picture gallery, along with natural-history and ethnographic collections. It ends at the top with views over the Orava valley. Opening is seasonal.
Getting there
The castle rises above the village of Oravský Podzámok, about 7 km from Dolný Kubín. The nearest airport by distance is Sliač (SLD), about 71 km away; most visitors come by road through the Orava valley.
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From the encyclopaedia
Orava Castle is a castle situated on a high rock above Orava river in the village of Oravský Podzámok, Slovakia. The castle was built in the Kingdom of Hungary, with the oldest parts being built in the thirteenth century and the most recent parts in the early seventeenth century. Many scenes of the 1922 film Nosferatu were filmed here, the castle representing Count Orlok's Transylvanian castle.
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