Simontornya Fortress
“The castle has been no Renaissance, no Angevin knight’s castle, nor Kuruc border castle — but all of them at once.”
I love visiting fortresses, castles, palaces, manors, country houses, old mansions and churches, ruins, and all other places with an intriguing story. To be honest, I love history. Sometimes I regret that I didn’t choose to become a historian. On the other hand, I feed my soul with stories of places I visit and people I find there. My fascination for these two things led me to start this project, and here, at Eastern Chronicles, I’ll often write about historical places as they are, good and bad.
Today I’ll tell you about Simontornya, a little town situated in Tolna, Hungary. In English, its name means “Simon’s Tower” and relates to Simon, son of Solomon, who built a residential tower there in the 13th century. This place has a long, impressive history, but I’ll just do a quick summary so you don’t get bored. Of course, you are welcome to explore the subject in greater depth.
This tower — of which I’ll start referring as “the castle” from now on — has gone through the hands of several owners, and, throughout the centuries, almost each one of them made some major or minor alteration to the original architecture. Furthermore, for almost 150 years the castle was occupied by the Turks. During the tumultuous events of the 1700s, it was the stronghold of the Kuruc rebels in southwest Hungary. But the real decline of the castle started in the late 18th century, when it began to be used as a… barn. This remained the main function of the building until the 1960s, when archeological excavations started.
The castle is now open to the public. I can’t remember how much it cost to visit, but I can’t forget the cashier, who, for some reason, was rude to us. Maybe it was because we arrived 30 minutes before closing time. However, 20 minutes was more than enough time to take a tour. 80 percent of the castle’s area is now a ruin and, as if that would not be enough, most of the rooms are empty or locked.
At least the permanent exhibition of medieval weapons counterbalanced these issues. And I spent most of the time in the knight’s hall, admiring the portraits of those who once lived in the castle. I still don’t know if the paintings are the original ones. I thought about asking the cashier but I quickly dropped the idea, mostly because she didn’t speak any English.
While inside the castle, due to the visible degradation and alterations over centuries, it was hard to imagine how it looked in its golden age. There was even a hall with walls made of glass blocks, which looked very modern and surprisingly wrong. This hall was full of pieces of the old structure of the castle, probably discovered during archeological excavations. After seeing all that, I soon realized that it was more spectacular to admire the castle from the outside than inside. I left from there feeling that the people of Simontornya should start taking the historical and cultural importance of their castle more seriously.
The construction is often described as a Renaissance castle, but I tend to agree with the conclusions gained after the archeological excavations: “The castle has been no Renaissance, no Angevin knight’s castle, nor Kuruc border castle — but all of them at once. In detail, faithfully construction periods carry the beauty and tragedy of Hungarian history at the same time.”
Photo credit: Cristian Sitov/ Doiniţa Spuză
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