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HUNEDOARA |
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HUNEDOARA (Vajdahunyad/Eisenmarkt), 16km south of Deva, would be
dismissed as an ugly, smoggy, industrial town were it not also the site
of Corvin Castle , the greatest fortress in Romania (Tues-Sun 9am-5pm).
The travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor found its appearance "so
fantastic and theatrical that, at first glance, it looks totally unreal".
It's moated to a depth of 30m and approached by a narrow bridge upheld
by tall stone piers, terminating beneath a mighty barbican, its roof
bristling with spikes, overlooked by multitudes of towers, "some square
and some round and all of them frilled with machicolations". Founded
during the fourteenth century and rebuilt in 1453 by Iancu de Hunedoara,
with a Renaissance-style wing added by his son, Mátyás Corvinus, and
Baroque additions by Gabriel Bethlen in the seventeenth century, it was
extensively (and tastefully) restored between 1965 and 1970. Within, the
castle is an extravaganza of galleries, spiral stairways and Gothic
vaulting, with an impregnable donjon and a Knights' Hall with rose-coloured
marble pillars.
The castle's museum relates the achievements of Iancu de Hunedoara , the
warlord known in Hungarian as János Hunyadi. Legend has it that Hunyadi
was the illegitimate son of King Sigismund, who gave the castle to
Hunyadi's nominal father, Voicu, a Romanian noble, in 1409. Hunyadi, the
"White Knight", rose largely by his own efforts, winning victory after
victory against the Turks, and devastatingly routing them beneath the
walls of Belgrade in 1456. Appointed voivode of Transylvania in 1441,
Hunyadi later became regent of Hungary and a kingmaker (responsible for
the overthrow of Vlad Dracul and the coronation of the Impaler), while
his own son, Mátyás Corvinus, rose to be one of Hungary's greatest kings.
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