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Ruiny zamku Rożnów

Ruins of the Rożnów Castle

Fragment renesansowego zamku dolnego Rożnów. Kamienny mur oraz również kamienny kwadratowy niski budynek bez okien, z czerwonym dachem to obronny beluard o.

33-316 Rożnów Tourist region: Beskid Sądecki i Niski

In Rożnów, on a steep hill above the Dunajec River, there are the ruins of a medieval knight's castle from the 14th century, known as the upper castle of the Zawisza Czarny castle, and the Renaissance fortifications from the 16th century, i.e. the lower castle.

Already in the 13thcentury, the first watchtower of the Griffin family stood on the promontory that used to be surrounded by the Dunajec bend by the trade route to Hungary. A stone, small, Gothic knight's castle, consisting of a residential house and a courtyard surrounded by a wall, was built in the years 1336–1370 by knights from the Rożen family, the Gryf coat of arms. In 1409, it passed into the hands of Piotr Kurowski, from 1426 it belonged to Zawisza Czarny of Garbów, trusted king Władysław Jagiełło and hero of the Battle of Grunwald of 1410, and later to his descendants.  The next owners in the 16th century were the Wydżgów and Tarnowski families. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the abandoned castle fell into ruin. To this day, only neglected fragments of the perimeter walls and internal buildings have survived. When the upper castle became too small, its owner, Grand Hetman of the Crown, Jan Tarnowski, in 1560, in the valley on the bank of the Dunajec, began the construction of the lower Renaissance castle, and the upper castle was completely abandoned. A gatehouse was built, connected by a curtain wall with arrow slits with a stone, pentagonal boulevard, adapted to the use of firearms, with walls up to 3 metres thick. Jan Tarnowski was the great-grandson of Zawisza Czarny and a theoretician of the art of war. His fortress was to be one of the most modern in Poland at that time, but after the death of the hetman in 1561, the building was not completed. Later, the beluard housed a bell foundry, a congregation of Polish brothers and a distillery. In 2014, the ruins passed into private hands, and the new owners were to partially reconstruct the original foundations. In 2015–2016, during the archaeological excavations,  cobblestone was discovered in the castle courtyard. The plan was to recreate the castle tower, the outline of the walls and the layout of the rooms, and to use modern architecture to display the discoveries made in the castle and to arrange the museum hall so that the castle would be a tourist attraction and a place for organising knightly events. The plans are waiting to be implemented.


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