1331 · 1370 The rock becomes a countyZo skaly sa stáva stolica

In 1331 Orava was taken out of the jurisdiction of the count of Zvolen, and by 1370 the castle was the centre of a county of its own. That promotion is what made it grow. A castle that holds a valley needs walls and a garrison; a castle that holds a county's taxes, courts, records and prisoners needs rooms, and rooms are what the summit did not have. A tall four-sided tower — a donjon, the last-stand keep — was built on the rock in the fourteenth century and is still the core of what you climb to. Everything the castle gained after this had to go somewhere below it, because there was nowhere else. That single constraint is why Orava looks the way it does and no other Slovak castle does.V roku 1331 bola Orava vyňatá spod právomoci zvolenského župana a v roku 1370 už bol hrad centrom samostatnej stolice. Práve toto povýšenie ho prinútilo rásť. Hrad, ktorý stráži dolinu, potrebuje múry a posádku; hrad, v ktorom sú stoličné dane, súdy, písomnosti a väzni, potrebuje miestnosti — a miestnosti temeno skaly nemalo. V 14. storočí naň postavili vysokú štvorbokú vežu, donjon, útočiskovú vežu poslednej obrany, a tá je dodnes jadrom toho, k čomu vyleziete. Všetko, čo hrad získal potom, muselo ísť niekam pod ňu, lebo inde miesto nebolo. To jediné obmedzenie je dôvod, prečo Orava vyzerá tak, ako vyzerá, a prečo tak nevyzerá nijaký iný slovenský hrad.