Hrad Krásna Hôrka Castle

Krásna Hôrka Castle stands on the highest point of a conical hill above the village of Krásnohorské Podhradie near Rožňava. The first written mention of it dates from 1333, and it has been a national cultural monument since 1961. The Monuments Board of the Slovak Republic registers it as a complex of 22 structures under ÚZPF number 518.

The castle is currently closed to the public. The Slovak National Museum, which manages it as part of the Betliar Museum, states that it is closed for reconstruction. An estimate from 2019 anticipated opening the lower and middle parts in 2024 and the upper part later; before you travel, please check the current situation on the SNM website.

The castle was built to protect a medieval road that ran through the mining areas of the Slovak Ore Mountains. It probably stands on the site of an older fortified settlement which in 1241 gave King Béla IV refuge from the Tatars. The oldest part consisted of a prismatic tower with a residential palace and shared fortifications. For more than 300 years the castle was ruled by the Bebek family, descendants of the Ákos family.

In the mid-16th century, because of the threat of a Turkish invasion, František Bebek had new fortifications built to designs by the Italian architect A. de Vedano. The castle thus acquired a triangular ground plan with semicircular bastions at the corners, and the original core ended up in the middle of the complex. Heavy cannons cast in 1545 and 1547 still stand on the terrace. The Bebek family died out in 1567 with the death of Juraj Bebek.

After a period of royal captains, Peter Andrássy took the castle on lease and at the end of the 16th century began a reconstruction that lasted a hundred years. The Andrássy family acquired it by deed of donation in 1642 and rebuilt it into a representative aristocratic residence: a representative wing with a county assembly hall was added, along with a covered Renaissance gallery, and a bakery and kitchen in the lower castle. In 1770 a Baroque chapel was created by converting a cannon bastion. After a fire in 1818 the castle received makeshift repairs, and in 1857 it became the Andrássy family museum, which was open to the public after 1875. In 1903 Count Dionýz Andrássy established a memorial museum to Countess Františka here. The castle has been state property since 1945.

On the afternoon of Saturday 10 March 2012, burning grass on the slopes of the castle hill set the scrub alight and the fire spread to the castle roofs. The shingle roofs, the exhibition in the upper Gothic palace and the bell tower burned down, and the ceiling of the congregation hall collapsed. Firefighters saved 90 percent of the exhibits; the damage was estimated at 8 million euros. After the fire, the roofs were given replicas of the original roof trusses; restoration of the complex continues.

Before it closed, the castle displayed an exhibition of fortification architecture from the 13th to the 18th century, collections of medieval and oriental weapons, 17th-century furniture, the assembly hall of the county congregations, the castle chapel with the painting of the Madonna of Krásna Hôrka from 1739, the Andrássy family tomb, the castle kitchen with an open hearth and a music salon.