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Castle Salgo - Wikipedia
In the beginning it was only a square-shaped stone tower. The people called it ’Salgó’ meaning ’shine’, however it’s still not clear whether the name ’Salgó’ was the name of the volcanic peak, or they started to call the place by this name after the tower was erected. This fortified tower was built by the Kacsics clan, who were the lords around these hills in the 13th century. According to certain consideration the building of this tower related to the Mongol invasion (1241-1242), because all over Hungary only the fortified towns or castles could resist the Tartar’s army. The sieges of fortresses were not the Tatar’s cup of tea. After the invasion the king, IV. Béla ordered and supported the fortifications of manor houses and towns and the building of new strongholds.
Salgó started as a small tower (7,5 x 9,5 m) and a small castle-yard. It is thought that the cellar of the tower was used as a prison. The water-supply was a difficult one on this volcanic rock, therefore in the lower level of the peak, under the tower, they constructed a water-collecting cistern. This rock-castle had two cistern, a huge and a smaller one. The water was essential, not only for drinking but also fire fighting.
In 1460 the Hussites captured the small fortress of Salgó. King Mathias the First recaptured it in the same year and gave it to Imre Szapolyai. This time was the great age of Salgó. The lower castle-yard was built in that time and the upper castle-yard became roofed-over. This part of the yard became a living space. The lord of the castle didn’t live in Salgó but his substitute, the castellan lived in this upper yard living building. In the lower castle-yard there were the stables and the storehouses. In the 16th century a huge pentagonal battlement ( 14 x 15 m) was built in the east side of the rock.
Even this reinforced building could not resist the Turkish (Ottoman) attack. Legends were told, that Kara Hamza bey, the governor of Szécsény and Hatvan, took the castle by ruse. He made his soldiers lay tree trunks on to gun carriages and push them under the fortress. The soldiers in the tower thought that the trunks were real guns because they couldn't see well in the fog. They handed over Salgó. In the reality the fortress was shelled into ruins by the Turks. They set the artillery on the top of the neighbouring hill, opposite to Salgó called Kis-Salgó (Small-Salgó) or Boszorkánykő (The cliff of witches).
The father of Bálint Balassi, the great Hungarian poet, got the fortress (however the Turkish was in it). After his death his sons Bálint and Ferenc Kövér couldn’t decide who was the owner. It was an acrimonious lawsuit of long standing between them.
In 1593 Michael Pálffy and Christof Tieffenbach reoccupied Salgó. Bálint Balassi died in 1594 in the siege of Esztergom. The nephew of Bálint inherited the ruins of Salgó but he left it alone. The ruins became overgrown with grass and shrubs. When Sándor Petőfi another great and famous poet of Hungary climbed up to the ruins of Salgó in 1845 the atmosphere of the ruins made him write his romantic poetry: Salgó. This is a tragic story about Kompolti clan the lords of Salgó who tyrannized the region, which were under their power. The story is based on a traditional legend.
Nowadays Salgó is a well-known, beauty tourist spot.
Hungary (Hungarian: Magyarország, in English officially the Republic of Hungary (Magyar Köztársaság), literally Magyar (Hungarian) Republic), is a landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Its capital is Budapest. Hungary is a member of OECD, NATO, EU, V4 and is a Schengen state. The official language is Hungarian, which is part of the Finno-Ugric family, thus one of the four official languages of the European Union that are not of Indo-European origin.Following a Celtic (after c. 450 BC) and a Roman (9 AD – c. 430) period, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th century by the Hungarian ruler Árpád, whose great-grandson Stephen I of Hungary was crowned with a crown sent from Rome by the pope in 1000. After being recognized as a kingdom, Hungary remained a monarchy for 946 years, and at various points was regarded as one of the cultural centers of the Western world. A significant power until the end of World War I, Hungary lost over 70% of its territory, along with 3.3 million people of Hungarian ethnicity, under the Treaty of Trianon, the terms of which have been considered excessively harsh by many in Hungary. Hungary lost eight of its ten biggest cities as well. The kingdom was succeeded by a Communist era (1947–1989) during which Hungary gained widespread international attention regarding the Revolution of 1956 and the seminal move of opening its border with Austria in 1989, thus accelerating the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. The present form of government is a parliamentary republic (since 1989). Today, Hungary is a high-income economy, and a regional leader regarding certain markers.In the past decade, Hungary was listed as one of the 15 most popular tourist destinations in the world. The country is home to the largest thermal water cave system and the second largest thermal lake in the world (Lake Hévíz), the largest lake in Central Europe (Lake Balaton), and the largest natural grasslands in Europe (Hortobágy).Slightly more than one half of Hungary's landscape consists of flat to rolling plains of the Pannonian Basin: the most important plain regions include the Little Hungarian Plain in the west, and the Great Hungarian Plain in the southeast. The highest elevation above sea level on the latter is only 183 metres.Transdanubia is a primarily hilly region with a terrain varied by low mountains. These include the very eastern stretch of the Alps, Alpokalja, in the west of the country, the Transdanubian Medium Mountains, in the central region of Transdanubia, and the Mecsek Mountains and Villány Mountains in the south. The highest point of the area is the Írott-kő in the Alps, at 882 metres.The highest mountains of the country are located in the Carpathians: these lie in the northern parts, in a wide band along the Slovakian border (highest point: the Kékes at 1,014 m/3,327 ft).Hungary is divided in two by its main waterway, the Danube (Duna); other large rivers include the Tisza and Dráva, while Transdanubia contains Lake Balaton, a major body of water. The largest thermal lake in the world, Lake Hévíz (Hévíz Spa), is located in Hungary. The second largest lake in the Pannonian Basin is the artificial Lake Tisza (Tisza-tó).Phytogeographically, Hungary belongs to the Central European province of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. According to the WWF, the territory of Hungary belongs to the ecoregion of Pannonian mixed forests.Hungary has a Continental climate, with hot summers with low overall humidity levels but frequent rainshowers and frigid to cold snowy winters. Average annual temperature is 9.7 °C (49.5 °F). Temperature extremes are about 42 °C (107.6 °F) in the summer and −29 °C (−20.2 °F) in the winter. Average temperature in the summer is 27 °C (80.6 °F) to 35 °C (95 °F) and in the winter it is 0 °C (32 °F) to −15 °C (5.0 °F). The average yearly rainfall is approximately 600 mm (23.6 in). A small, southern region of the country near Pécs enjoys a reputation for a Mediterranean climate, but in reality it is only slightly warmer than the rest of the country and still receives snow during the winter. Tibor IllesITB Panorama Photo
