Bonțida Bánffy Castle

The Bonțida estate passed to the Hungarian Bánffy of Losonc family in 1387, when Sigismund of Luxemburg granted it to Dénes, son of Tamás Losonci. An earlier manor house of the 15th and 16th centuries stood on the site, documented from after 1640.

Dénes Bánffy II (1638–1674), county governor of Doboka and Kolozs, brother-in-law and counsellor to Prince Michael I Apafi, turned that L-plan manor into a fortified seat between 1668 and 1674, wrapping it in curtain walls on a rectangular plan with circular towers at the four corners and a seven-storey gatehouse on the east. After his beheading the work was carried on by his heir, the future governor György Bánffy III, and an inventory of 1736 records the Renaissance buildings before the Baroque changes. Between 1704 and 1711 the ensemble was damaged in Rákóczi's war of independence and needed repair.

The estate came to Dénes Bánffy IV in 1735, when he was twelve. He returned from Maria Theresa's court in Vienna in 1747 and began rebuilding in the Austrian Baroque manner: between 1747 and 1751 a U-shaped cour d'honneur went up on the eastern side of the Renaissance building, holding the riding school, the stables, the carriage rooms and the servants' quarters. The sculptor Johann Nachtigall supplied its stone figures, taken from Ovid.

The same campaign laid out the park beside the Someș, designed by Johann Christian Erras — 70 hectares of strict geometry with walkways, statues and fountains. The north wing of the main building was finished by Dénes's son György V; an inscription above the courtyard balcony carries the year 1784.

In 1820 József Bánffy had the gate tower demolished, uniting the Renaissance and Baroque courtyards; from the stone a water mill was built for the villagers of Bonțida. The east and west ranges were refaced in Classicist style at the same time. In the 1850s the architect Anton Kagerbauer recast the western front — main building and former kitchen — in the Romantic, Neo-Gothic taste, to match the park's re-landscaping on the English model.

In 1858 József sold the castle to Baron Miklós Bánffy, count of Lower Alba, grandfather of the writer and politician of the same name, who was the last owner before nationalisation.

Count Miklós Bánffy restored the western facade and the north-west tower in 1935–1937. In the same decade he simplified the upper storey of the loggia on the western wing, which had carried intricate tracery, to his own designs and those of his friend the architect Károly Kós.

In 1944 the castle was in use as a military hospital. Retreating German troops attacked, plundered and burned the whole ensemble, destroying the furniture, the library and the well-known gallery of portraits. Bánffy had opened negotiations between the Hungarian and Romanian governments for both states to change sides and turn their weapons against Germany, and the devastation is taken to have been reprisal against him.

An agricultural cooperative moved into a still-serviceable wing in the 1950s; the buildings also served as a driving school and a children's hospital. Nationalisation and the lack of maintenance told on castle and park alike: villagers took the bricks for building material, the park went to pasture and its trees to firewood. The Cluj-Napoca art museum saved the park's Baroque statues, which remain in its store. The Directorate of Historic Monuments considered rehabilitation in the 1960s but had no funds, and the castle became a store for building materials. In 1963 Liviu Ciulei filmed Pădurea spânzuraților here; for a short fire scene the crew set light to one of the buildings, causing massive damage.

The castle was declared a historic monument in 1990. In 1999, at the Transylvania Trust's request, it was placed on the World Monuments Watch list of the hundred most endangered sites, and a Romanian–Hungarian state agreement the same year opened the way to restoration; Romanian state funds rebuilt about two-thirds of the main roof. The Trust took a long-term lease in 2003 and re-signed it in 2008, for 49 years, with Katalin Bánffy, daughter of Miklós and the castle's owner since it was returned to her. A conservation training programme began in 2001 with the kitchen building; the Built Heritage Conservation Training Centre opened in 2005 and won the Europa Nostra prize in 2008, and Princess Margareta of Romania took on its patronage in 2007. Since 2013 the castle has hosted the Electric Castle music festival each July.