Bálványos Castle
fortification
Bálványos Castle (Hungarian: Bálványosvár, Romanian: Cetatea Bálványos) is a castle ruin of national monument status, located in the north of Covasna County, Romania. As a Romanian national monument, its code is CV-II-m-A-13297. "Bálványos" in Hungarian means "idolatrous", so the name of the fortress can be loosely translated into "the Castle with/of the Idols".
Location
Bálványos Castle can be found on the top of a steep hill, to the northwest of where the Turia and Bodoc mountains meet.
Etymology
The castle received its name from the fact that it was one of the last holdouts of the original pagan Hungarian faith. The castle's lords, the Apor family, refused to convert to Christianity, long after the conversion of most of the rest of the country.
According to traditional tales, the Apors became Christians in the early 12th century. According to a legend, the lord's son, Apor Szilamér, wanted to marry Mike Imola, then the only child of the rival Mike family. The Mikes were already Christians at the time, making a marriage impossible. Apor Szilamér decided to kidnap the girl, provoking the anger of the Mike family, who prepared to lay siege to the castle.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bálványos Castle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.