Esztergom Castle

Esztergom Castle in Esztergom, Hungary occupies the site of a Roman fort known as Solva.

The location acquired new importance at the end of the tenth century when Grand Prince Géza established a palace and a church there. His son, Saint Stephen, is credited with the earliest royal residential buildings and the first major southern defensive works. In the mid-eleventh century the Holy Adalbert Cathedral and additional archiepiscopal structures were built on the central plateau, and the hill became the administrative and religious heart of the Hungarian kingdom. For roughly two and a half centuries the palatial and defensive complex was rebuilt and enlarged and served as one of the principal royal residences of Hungary.

The castle’s status changed after the Mongol invasion of 1241. King Béla IV moved the royal seat to Buda in 1256 and left the complex to the clergy; the archbishopric seat building survives and today functions as a museum. Over the late medieval and early modern centuries the site continued to be altered and adapted in response to shifting needs.

From the early sixteenth century the castle was the focus of repeated military contest between Habsburg and Ottoman forces. Ottoman occupation is reported in 1526, and Ferdinand of Habsburg took the site in 1527. Ottoman forces retook it in 1529, and there are reports of Ferdinand occupying the castle again in 1530. Another account records Ottoman rule beginning in 1529, a loss in 1531, and a reoccupation in 1543. In 1543 Sultan Süleyman I laid siege to the fortress and captured it in August of that year after a campaign that some accounts place as beginning in late April; following the capture the locality was organized as a sancak and attached to the Buda beylerbeyliği.

The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw further sieges. On 4 August 1595 a force composed of German, Polish and Venetian troops began a siege against the castle, which was held by a small garrison under Sokolluzade Lala Mehmed Pasha; the defenders surrendered on 2 September 1595 because of hunger and thirst. The resistance was recorded by the Ottoman historian İbrahim Peçevi and inspired the folk song known as the “Estergon Kalesi Türküsü.” In 1605 Sokolluzade Lala Mehmed Pasha retook the castle after a siege lasting about thirty days, with dates of recapture given as 25 September 1605 and 3 October 1605 in different accounts. Ottoman control of the fortress ended in 1683 after the Ottoman failure at Vienna and subsequent operations by the armies of the Holy League, with one source recording the loss on 1 November 1683.

In the twentieth century and later, restoration work has been undertaken on the palace structures on the southern side of the complex, with major interventions carried out in 1938, around 1970 and in 2000.