Castle of Sümeg

The walls of Sümeg, which is one of the most beautiful and best-preserved medieval castles in Hungary, were built on a prominent, lonely mountain peak in the western landscape of the Balaton highlands. The bishop of Veszprém erected the building by order of Béla IV in the 13th century. The fortress, which was gradually built up over the centuries, also fell into the hands of the unlimitedly powerful oligarchs of the Transdanubia, the Kőszegi family, and in the age of Ottoman subjugation it served as a strong fortress as a refuge for the bishop of Veszprém, especially after the fall of Veszprém. The building was also important during Rákóczi’s time, as a base for the Kuruc insurgents, and then gradually began to fall into disrepair from the 18th century, until by the 1960s it existed only in the form of ruins. It was then that its first serious research and monument restoration took place. Since then, the building complex has been gradually regaining its former glory, most recently a significant investment was made in the framework of the National Castle Program, in the framework of which the entire eastern wing was rebuilt, from the chapel to the Köves bastion. As part of the project, new exhibition spaces were created, which included a virtual reconstruction of the castle’s 4 historical periods. The experts were János Albert, Gergely Buzás and Zsófia Lukács.