Poland · Ruin
Czorsztyn Castle
Zamek w Czorsztynie
Czorsztyn Castle is a medieval hilltop castle ruin in southern Poland, perched on a steep grassy crag above the surrounding lowland. The surviving stone curtain walls and fragmented tower remnants form an irregular, battered silhouette; the site is accessible to visitors who walk along the exposed wall-walks and paths.
First raised
1201
Its prime
1520
Today
Ruin
As it stood in 1520
What Czorsztyn Castle looked like in its prime.
Perched on a steep, grassy limestone knoll, the castle reads as an irregular ring of pale-brown rubble-stone curtain walls with several low, rounded tower remnants and a taller ruined keep at one end. Large rectangular and arched window-openings puncture the wall faces; a prominent arched gateway/void sits on the lower left. A narrow parapet/wall-walk runs along the summit where people now stand; there are no intact roofs visible in the photo. At its prime the walls formed a continuous defended ring.
Its story
The story of Czorsztyn Castle.
Czorsztyn began in the late 13th century as an earthwork above the Dunajec, replaced at the turn of the 14th century by a round mortared tower ten metres across with walls up to three metres thick. First called Wronin, it was probably raised by the Poor Clares of Stary Sącz or their foundress Duchess Kunigunde, and guarded the Hungarian frontier, the river ford and the Buda–Kraków road opposite the Hungarian castle of Niedzica. The name Czorsztyn first appears in a 1348 charter of Casimir the Great, who took the castle for the crown.
From the reign of Władysław Jagiełło it was the seat of royal starosts, among them the knight Zawisza Czarny, and in the early 17th century the starost Jan Baranowski rebuilt it with two new bastions. In June 1651 the peasant rebel Aleksander Kostka Napierski seized Czorsztyn with a handful of men; besieged by the bishop of Kraków's soldiers, the garrison surrendered and Napierski was impaled. Lightning fired the already decaying castle in 1790, and locals quarried the ruin.
Jan Maksymilian Drohojowski bought the ruin and its lands in 1819, and his family kept them until expropriation in 1945; Konstanty Drohojowski began the first excavations and repairs and in 1921 founded the nature reserve that seeded the Pieniny National Park. The damming of the Dunajec between 1969 and 1996 drowned the lower castle and the old village beneath Lake Czorsztyn; the secured upper and middle castle opened to visitors in 1996.
Step inside
5 places to explore in 1520.
The record describes 5 distinct spots at Czorsztyn Castle, including the full exterior approach. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
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Clans who held Czorsztyn Castle.
The families that held Czorsztyn Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
Drohojowski
Held by the Drohojowski family from 1819 until expropriation in 1945.
