Krásna Hôrka Castle

The Hungarian Ákos brothers built Krásna Hôrka in the 13th century on the trade road running from Transylvania through Košice to Spiš and on into Poland. The castle arose to guard a road through the mining districts of the Slovak Ore Mountains, probably on the site of an earlier hillfort that sheltered King Béla IV during the Mongol invasion of 1241; the king rewarded the Ákos family, ancestors of the Bebek line, with extensive estates in Gemer, where they held Krásna Hôrka for more than three centuries. The castle's first written mention dates from 1333. In 1441 troops under Ján Jiskra occupied the surrounding Gemer region but left the castle itself standing; once the garrison withdrew, it returned to Bebek hands, apart from a brief seizure by the Máriássy family, and stayed with the Bebeks until 1566.

Facing the threat of Ottoman raids and fighting over the royal succession, František Bebek built new fortifications at the castle in 1546 to the design of the Italian architect A. de Vedano. The Turks attacked and occupied his castle at Fiľakovo, and when Bebek learned they had taken it with the emperor's consent he turned on the imperial troops and raided the noble seats around him; those he harmed secured his punishment by exile. His son Juraj, suspected of organising a revolt against the emperor, spent five years as an Ottoman captive, and the Bebek line died out with Juraj's death in Transylvania in 1567.

Royal captains held the castle after the Bebeks, to little benefit, until the young Péter Andrássy took it on long lease and began a rebuilding that would eventually run for a century. The castle passed formally to him in 1578, and in 1642 the Andrássy family received it by donation charter, remaking it into an aristocratic residence while retaining its defences. It was renovated again after 1710, at the same time as the family's mansion at Betliar, owned by Štefan Andrássy, and a baroque chapel was built into a former cannon bastion in 1770. Fire damaged the castle in 1818; Štefan's wife carried out emergency repairs, and their son Juraj continued the work, turning Krásna Hôrka into the family's own museum by 1857, opened to the public after 1875. In 1903 Count Dionýz Andrássy installed a memorial museum to Countess Františka Hablawcová within its walls.

How long the family kept possession is told two ways: the castle is said to have left Andrássy hands in 1918, the year Czechoslovakia was founded, or to have remained with the family, following a 1903–1905 restoration, until 1945, when it passed to the state.

Krásna Hôrka was designated a National Cultural Monument of Slovakia in 1961 and was said to be one of the country's best-preserved castles. It underwent renovation in 2010–2011 and reopened to the public in April 2011.

On 10 March 2012 the castle was extensively damaged by fire after teenagers carelessly discarded a cigarette and set the hillside grass alight; the flames spread to the buildings and destroyed the roof, the exhibition in the Gothic palace and the bell tower, melting three bells. Slovakia's Interior Minister, Daniel Lipšic, said the vast majority of exhibits had survived, and the Slovak National Museum later put the figure at 90 per cent undamaged; the Culture Minister, Daniel Krajcer, said only the castle's upper part, including its collections, had been lost. Damage was estimated at 8 million euros. A temporary wooden roof went up in December 2012 and repair work continued into 2013; a 2019 estimate expected the lower and middle parts of the castle to reopen to visitors in 2024, with the upper castle to follow later because of the extent of the damage and ongoing archaeological work.