While the south of the kingdom was fought over by Habsburg and Ottoman armies for a century and a half, Liptov stayed outside it: this valley was never under Ottoman rule and the fighting frontier stayed far to the south. That does not mean nothing happened here. Likava passed to the Thurzó family — the same house that held Orava and Bytča — who rebuilt the castle as a Renaissance residence and ran their Liptov estates from behind its walls, so the landlord of Ružomberok was now one of the greatest families in the kingdom. That double character is still legible in the stonework above the town: a hard medieval core with a comfortable later house grafted onto it.Kým sa juh kráľovstva poldruha storočia bil s osmanskými a habsburskými vojskami, Liptov ostal mimo: toto údolie nikdy nepatrilo pod osmanskú správu a bojová hranica zostala ďaleko na juhu. Neznamená to však, že sa tu nič nedialo. Likava prešla na Thurzovcov — ten istý rod, ktorý držal Oravu aj Bytču — a tí hrad prestavali na renesančné sídlo a spoza jeho múrov spravovali svoje liptovské panstvá; zemepánom Ružomberka sa tak stal jeden z najmocnejších rodov kráľovstva. Ten dvojaký ráz je v murive nad mestom čitateľný dodnes: tvrdé stredoveké jadro a naň naštepený pohodlnejší neskorší dom.
