1331 · 1370s One castle, one county, one estateJeden hrad, jedna stolica, jedno panstvo

In 1331 Orava was taken out of the jurisdiction of the count of Zvolen, and by the 1370s it was a county in its own right with the castle as its seat. Here is the fact that shapes everything afterwards: in Orava the county and the castle's estate were very nearly the same thing. Almost every village in the valley belonged to the castle domain, so there was no crowd of competing landowners and no wealthy free town to argue with them. That is why Orava has nothing like the merchant squares of Levoča or Bardejov, and why its history from here on is largely the history of one estate and the people who worked for it.V roku 1331 bola Orava vyňatá spod právomoci zvolenského župana a v 70. rokoch 14. storočia už bola samostatnou stolicou so sídlom na hrade. A tu je fakt, ktorý určí všetko ďalšie: na Orave boli stolica a hradné panstvo takmer to isté. Takmer každá dedina v doline patrila hradnému panstvu, takže tu nebol zástup súperiacich zemepánov ani bohaté slobodné mesto, ktoré by im oponovalo. Preto Orava nemá nič ako kupecké námestia Levoče či Bardejova a preto sú jej ďalšie dejiny predovšetkým dejinami jedného panstva a ľudí, ktorí naň robili.