Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Hunedoara
POP 71, 207
One of Romania's most communist-looking cities, Hunedoara's skeletal steel mills sur-
round one of Eastern Europe's loveliest medieval endeavours, Corvin Castle. It's a surreal
time-travel experience - one second you're in the midst of commie-drab architercture, the
next in the Gothic turrets of the 14th century. But visit the castle as a day trip rather than
staying overnight.
The adjacent bus and train stations are a few hundred metres from Hotel Rusca; take Str
Avram Iancu 200m for a couple of long blocks east, then head right (south) on L-shaped
B-dul Dacia to where it bends back towards the west.
Sights
Corvin Castle
(Castelul Corvinestilor; 0254-711 423; www.corvincastle.com ; adult/student 10/5 lei;
9am-6pm Tue-Sun, 9am-3pm Mon) This creepy Gothic castle, with its drawbridge over
a rushing river, leaps from all your favourite horror films but seems incongruously close
to the industrialised, scarified buildings around it. And while it might lack crags and
forests swirling round it, on the frightometer it beats Bran Castle with its eyes shut.
Play 'shoot the cabbage' (five arrows for 10 lei) with a bow and arrow, wander through
the church-high vaulted darkness of the largely unrestored downstairs chambers and past a
hunter's gallery of lynx, wolf, boar and bear pelts. In the upstairs banquet hall you can
live out your inner Monty Python Holy Grail fantasy dressed as a maiden or knight in its
fancy-dress wardrobe (5 lei for half an hour).
The fantastical monument stands as a symbol of Hungarian rule. The fairy-tale castle
walls, believed to be built on old Roman fortifications, were hewn out of 30m of solid
rock by Turkish prisoners. Eventually Jules Verne included the castle in his Around the
World in 80 Days itinerary in 1873. The castle was fully restored in 2009.
From the bus or train station, the castle is about 1.5km southwest, but it's easier to take
the bus to the old centre (2 lei) then walk the short distance from there.
CASTLE
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