What better way to spend the morning of the Day of the Virgin Mary of the Seven Sorrows national holiday than to visit a nearby castle? After all, as our tour guide asserted last week, Slovakia is a country of castles, caves, and hedgehogs. And Devín Castle (Hrad Devín) is such a cool place that it warrants an entire post to itself, and one bursting with pictures. (It also has a cave, but we didn't see any hedgehogs.)
The village of Devín and its castle occupy a location that had great strategic value in the time of river travel. It lies at the confluence of the Morava River and the Danube. The Morava is a major river flowing south from extreme northeastern Czech Republic (in the north of the region of Moravia) and forming much of the western border of the Slovak Republic, with the Czech Republic in the north and with Austria further south. The Danube, of course, is the major river of central and eastern Europe, flowing east from southwestern Germany to the Black Sea in Romania. So perched high on rocks above the confluence of these two major arteries, Devín has been a fortress since Roman times and before.
It's also very close to us. To get a geographical perspective, our apartment is at the red pin in this map. The castle is marked by its Slovak name Hrad Devín on the extreme left. About a ten minute drive along the Danube.
Zooming in on the castle itself gives you an idea of the overall layout. I always tended to think of castles as single buildings, but they really are not. The outer walls enclose an area roughly the size of the Reed College campus, within which there is open land (now kept mowed by sheep and goats at Devín) and, when the castle was operational, many buildings were present including churches, defense-related structures, barracks for the troops, and housing for the castle servants. The inner walls then protected the actual place where the nobles lived, the main castle structure.
Archaeologists have found ruins on the site of Devín that date back thousands of years, and the castle itself dates from at least the 9th century. Being on two rivers, it was almost always on the border of something, as it is today. At various times, it was a northern outpost of the Roman Empire, an eastern outpost of the Great Moravian Empire, and a western outpost of the Hungarian Empire. The strategic utility of the site as a lookout and a defensive fortress is easy to imagine when looking up at its ruins from along the rivers below. The tower at the center of the picture sits on an isolated rock, and there is now no way to get there other than climbing the side of the rock. It is now called the "maiden tower" because it is exactly the kind of tower in which heroines of fairy tales seem likely to be imprisoned! Its actual use, though, was most likely military.
The castle has been in ruins since it was destroyed by Napoleon's armies in 1809. A sign along the walkway shows what it is thought to have looked like before its destruction.
Today, the ruins consist of middle castle and an upper castle. The latter is a very sad story. It was open to the public until 2008, but then was closed due to structural problems that required some restoration for tourists' safety. When they began the restoration, they discovered ancient archaeological relics that required careful extraction and analysis. But just as they were getting back to the restoration work, political changes and budget difficulties caused the project to be shut down in 2010, and it has not been restarted since. As a result, the upper castle (which looks like everything a great European castle ruin should be!) is closed to the public and we can only take pictures of it from the middle castle.
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| Upper castle, viewed from courtyard of middle castle |
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| Section of middle castle, originally three stories with windows |
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| Section of middle castle from the courtyard |
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| Looking down on the lower castle and Virgin Tower from the middle castle Note the brown water of the Morava (coming from the right) merging into the Blue Danube. Also note the gothic arch halfway up the rocks to the upper castle. This is the entrance to a cave below the castle. |
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| Town of Devín from middle castle |
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| More of the town |
A final picture shows a fast Twin City ferry boat racing down the Danube from Vienna to Bratislava. We hope to be passengers some day soon!
A wonderful morning! One that I just had to post right away even though it's not really time for another post for a few days. I hope that all of you have a good Day of the Virgin Mary of the Seven Sorrows as well. Say, why doesn't Reed take that holiday off anyway??? :)
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