Plavecký Castle Ruins, Plavecké Podhradie, Slovakia

Plavecký Castlee was built as a royal frontier castle between 1256 and 1273. Until the 16th century it was owned by Counts of Jur and Pezinok. In the second half of the 16th century the castle was rebuilt into a Renaissance style with the lower court. Gradually it was again fortified and maintained during the 17th century (new cannon towers were added then). In 1706 the castle was damaged the imperial army that conquered it from the rebels.

References:

Wikipedia

User Reviews

Oliver Bona (4 years ago)
Amazing place for a hike and sight seeing. Came over for a weekend, did a little paragliding, gorgeous !

Manuel Campagnoli (4 years ago)
Nice view, is possible to reach the castle in 30 min easily from the parking.

Pavol D (4 years ago)
nice historic place accessible 30minutes from parking lot. possible to do bbq on the way.

Andrew Rose (4 years ago)
Free castle ruins. Still well developed. Lots of precarious places to explore and take great photos. Must visit if you can! You can get to the nearby village by bus and then walk too :)

Matt Pierson (4 years ago)
Great castle ruins. You can either take the hike up from the town below, or we drove our four wheel drive up the back side of the mountain and were able to park in a meadow a couple hundred yards away. Don't attempt the road in bad weather or after rain, you'll get stuck. Looks like people camp in the meadow too. Castle ruins are more intact than most, but people are restoring parts of it and it's fairly safe (I brought my two and four year old), just watch out for the cliffs at the edge of the castle.

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Broch of Gurness

The Broch of Gurness is an Iron Age broch village. Settlement here began sometime between 500 and 200 BC. At the centre of the settlement is a stone tower or broch, which once probably reached a height of around 10 metres. Its interior is divided into sections by upright slabs. The tower features two skins of drystone walls, with stone-floored galleries in between. These are accessed by steps. Stone ledges suggest that there was once an upper storey with a timber floor. The roof would have been thatched, surrounded by a wall walk linked by stairs to the ground floor. The broch features two hearths and a subterranean stone cistern with steps leading down into it. It is thought to have some religious significance, relating to an Iron Age cult of the underground.

The remains of the central tower are up to 3.6 metres high, and the stone walls are up to 4.1 metres thick. The tower was likely inhabited by the principal family or clan of the area but also served as a last resort for the village in case of an attack.

The broch continued to be inhabited while it began to collapse and the original structures were altered. The cistern was filled in and the interior was repartitioned. The ruin visible today reflects this secondary phase of the broch's use.

The site is surrounded by three ditches cut out of the rock with stone ramparts, encircling an area of around 45 metres diameter. The remains of numerous small stone dwellings with small yards and sheds can be found between the inner ditch and the tower. These were built after the tower, but were a part of the settlement's initial conception. A 'main street' connects the outer entrance to the broch. The settlement is the best-preserved of all broch villages.

Pieces of a Roman amphora dating to before 60 AD were found here, lending weight to the record that a 'King of Orkney' submitted to Emperor Claudius at Colchester in 43 AD.

At some point after 100 AD the broch was abandoned and the ditches filled in. It is thought that settlement at the broch continued into the 5th century AD, the period known as Pictish times. By that time the broch was not used anymore and some of its stones were reused to build smaller dwellings on top of the earlier buildings. Until about the 8th century, the site was just a single farmstead.

In the 9th century, a Norse woman was buried at the site in a stone-lined grave with two bronze brooches and a sickle and knife made from iron. Other finds suggest that Norse men were buried here too.

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