Yesterday, with my wife Kati and her friend Trudy who came to visit us from British Columbia, we went to visit a Hungarian castle: Máré-vár.
It is a small castle that is not well known outside of Hungary: on Wikipedia, you will find a good article in Hungarian and a very short one in Turkish (3 lines). That's it!
We had already visited it with 3 of my 7 brothers when they came to Hungary several years ago.
To go there from Kati's house took us only 30 minutes by car.
We could have parked near the castle, but we decided to leave our car in a lower parking lot and walk to the castle. It took us some time, as we had to climb 75 metres while walking 800 metres.
When you arrive at the bottom of the stairs that go to the entrance of the castle, you are greeted by a three-headed dragon.
Near the dragon, you can read a small plaque, written in Hungarian, that is an extract of a fairy tale by Császár Levente, published in 2019.
The extract starts with
### ORE SINK
The treasure of the Iron Mountain attracted the dragons because some of them are directly addicted to the ore. It is almost impossible to destroy such a cunning beast, but his intoxicated love of ore has already caused his fire-breathing loss.
Here is the dragon from the top of the stairs:
The castle was originally built in the XIVth century. Like many castles that were built a long time ago, it has been modified extensively over the years.
In the XVIIIth century, it was in ruins. The renovation started during the 1950s.
Here are some pictures of the inside:
A view from the entrance.
A view taken from the ramparts.
Another view from the ramparts.
Kati and me on the ramparts.
We spent more than an hour in the castle.
Of course, it is a small castle, not as interesting as the magnificent castles of the Loire valley in France, but it is part of the history of Hungary.
-- Vincent Celier
