The Castle

In spite of its modafications the layout of the castle tipically represents the mud castles of the 16th century. The four towers and walls are enclosing an irregular square area. From East, West and South there are wide embankments rising almost the height of the walls. Casemates run along the North side which were built after the Turks had gone. In the middle of the South side of the wall an open, arched corniced pavilion rises. The castle gained its current form after the siege in 1566, when the Turks started the renovation and built the towers. At this time only one gate led inside the castle which still exist today, but it was renovated in Baroque style and now a vaulted doorway leads into the castle. Sultan Suleiman’s unique mosque stands in the middle of the courtyard with its truncated minaret and the prayer room which facing toward Mecca with Persian- Arabic writings on its wall inside.

At the beginnings of the 1930s earl Andrássy built his summer mansion to the mosque. The Miklós Zrínyi Museum operates there now which opened in 1966, where a part of the castle history exhibition can be seen on the ground floor. During the excavations at the area of the inner castle, the remains of the base of the medieval tower, the well, the square shaped knight’s castle were found. The ditch around the small castle and the exact place of Zrínyi and his soldiers’ outburst from the castle were also excavated.

The siege of Szigetvár in 1566

Our town’s past goes back thousands of years, however it became generally known for the heroic battles against the Ottomans. With this, it is also became one of the most famous castles in Hungary. Suleiman I. outnumbered the 2500 castle defenders by 30-40 times and encamped on a plain, east side of the wall, on the 5th of August 1566. The Turkish sent ambassadors to Zrínyi and warned him to give up the castle. Zrínyi declined the offer and the siege began. At first the new town fell, and then the old town was taken over. The Turks drained the lake around the castle and started to fill up the ditch in order to make the castle approachable. The Ottoman army suffered significant losses, but the defenders were dwindling as well. The Sultan couldn’t see the occupation of the castle since he passed away two days before victory, but his death remained a secret.  His body was mounted on his horse in order to keep up the soldiers’ combative morale. Despite a month of fierce battle, Zrínyi chose to fight till the end instead of surrender: at dawn on the 7th of September he galloped out from the castle, heading his 200 men in one of history's great death-and-glory cavalry charges.