after 1241 · 1267 Stone instead of timberKameň namiesto dreva

In 1241 a Mongol army destroyed the Hungarian king's forces at Muhi and rode across the kingdom, and the lesson the survivors drew was that wooden forts were useless. King Béla IV spent the following decades pushing lords and the crown itself to build in stone on rock, and the mid-thirteenth-century castle here is one of the results: a stone fortress raised on the crag where a wooden fort had stood. Its job was the road — the valley below carries the route north over the mountains towards Poland, and whoever held the cliff held everything that moved on it. In 1267 King Béla IV took the castle into royal hands from Miko Balaša, giving Žilina, Varín and Sučany in exchange, which tells you how much a crag in a narrow valley was worth.V roku 1241 mongolské vojsko rozdrvilo uhorské sily pri Muhi a prehnalo sa krajinou a tí, čo prežili, si z toho odniesli jedno poučenie: drevené hradiská sú na nič. Belo IV. potom desaťročia tlačil pánov aj samotnú korunu, aby stavali z kameňa a na skale, a hrad z polovice 13. storočia je jedným z výsledkov: kamenná pevnosť na brale, kde predtým stálo drevené hradisko. Jeho úlohou bola cesta — dolinou pod ním vedie trasa cez hory na sever do Poľska a kto držal bralo, držal všetko, čo po nej išlo. V roku 1267 vzal Belo IV. hrad od Mika Balašu do kráľovských rúk a vymenil zaň Žilinu, Varín a Sučany, čo dosť presne hovorí, akú cenu malo bralo v úzkej doline.