1241 · 1267 A stone floor with a wooden castle on topKamenné prízemie a drevený hrad nad ním

The Mongol army broke the Hungarian royal host in 1241 and rode across the kingdom, and King Béla IV drew the obvious conclusion: a country with almost no stone castles has almost no defence. The limestone crag in the middle of the Orava valley was an obvious place to put one, because whoever held it held the road north to Poland and everything that moved on it. The castle appears in writing for the first time in 1267, when Béla IV took it over from a nobleman named Mikuláš Balaša. It was a modest thing at first — the ground floor stone, and what stood on top of it wooden — which is worth holding in your head as you look at the mass of masonry today. Do not let anyone tell you the Mongols destroyed this castle. It was not there to destroy; it exists because of them.Mongolské vojsko roku 1241 rozdrvilo uhorskú kráľovskú armádu a prehnalo sa krajinou a Belo IV. z toho vyvodil samozrejmý záver: krajina takmer bez kamenných hradov je takmer bez obrany. Vápencové bralo uprostred oravskej doliny bolo na hrad ako stvorené, lebo kto ho držal, držal cestu na sever do Poľska a všetko, čo po nej šlo. Hrad sa prvý raz spomína písomne v roku 1267, keď ho Belo IV. prevzal od šľachtica Mika Balašu. Spočiatku to bola skromná stavba — prízemie kamenné a to, čo stálo na ňom, drevené —, čo sa oplatí mať v hlave, keď dnes hľadíte na tú masu muriva. A nedajte si nahovoriť, že tento hrad zničili Mongoli. Nebolo tu ešte čo ničiť; hrad existuje práve pre nich.