In 1241 the Mongol army swept across the kingdom and, according to the town's later records, destroyed the settlement here. That kind of sentence needs care — most Slovak "destroyed by the Mongols" stories belong to castles that did not yet exist — but a wooden village on an open slope is exactly the sort of place that really did burn. King Béla IV's answer was stone castles and settlers, many of them German, and Modra was rebuilt by Hungarian and German colonists. The oldest written mention the town itself accepts as reliable comes out of that resettlement: a charter of Béla IV from 1256 naming the village villa Modor. An older date of 1158 is often quoted and you will find it in reference books, but Modra's own history does not treat it as sound.V roku 1241 sa cez Uhorsko prehnalo mongolské vojsko a podľa neskorších zápisov tunajšiu osadu zničilo. S takou vetou treba narábať opatrne — väčšina slovenských príbehov o „zničení Tatármi" patrí hradom, ktoré vtedy ešte nestáli — lenže drevená dedina na otvorenom svahu je presne to, čo naozaj horelo. Odpoveďou kráľa Bela IV. boli kamenné hrady a osadníci, mnohí z nich Nemci, a Modru obnovili uhorskí a nemeckí kolonisti. Najstaršiu písomnú zmienku, ktorú samo mesto pokladá za hodnovernú, priniesla práve táto obnova: listina Bela IV. z roku 1256, kde sa dedina uvádza ako villa Modor. Často sa cituje aj starší rok 1158 a nájdete ho v príručkách, ale modranské dejiny ho za spoľahlivý nepovažujú.
