This significant landmark was built in the 14th century. It is a stone guard castle near the Považie trade route and a ford through the river Váh. The river Váh leaves the gorge of the Domaša meander under the steep castle rock colonised since the Bronze Age. Its oldest part is the prism-like tower included in the polygonal fortification above the entrance to the courtyard with the tank and residential building on the opposite side. The castle often changed owners and one of them was also the important medieval oligarch Matheus Csak. At the beginning of the 15th century when the castle was in the ownership of Queen Barbara of Celje, a Gothic chapel, another tower-like building and a northern palace were built at the end of the northern palace. The fortification of the complex was strengthened by u-shaped bastions and the entrance was protected by an open arc-shaped bastion. Another rapid change of owners did not bring anything positive for the development of the castle until it was in the second half of the 16th century rebuilt in the Renaissance style under the ownership of Mikuláš and František Dersffy. The fortification reflecting the rapid development of the military technology and the artillery was strengthened by bastions. Thus the castle was prepared and became the seat of one of the leaders of the anti-Hapsburg uprising of the estates, Ferenc Wesselényi, and in the middle of the 17th century it became the most important fortress in the region of upper Považie. In 1678 the castle burned down and twenty years later after the uprisings of the estates were suppressed it was destroyed by order of the emperor Leopold I. After its restoration, this romantically situated ruin was made accessible to the public. There is a museum in it.
Heritage > National cultural monuments
