Inside Romania’s Most Stunning Medieval Castle 🇷🇴 Corvin Castle Tour

I'm Ashlyn and I'm Zach and this is Sierra and we're traveling A to Z. This week we're in Romania. Join us as we give you a tour of one of Europe's most beautiful medieval castles. Where are we going today? We are now heading to Corvin Castle which is about two hours from Cebu. Corvin Castle is also known as Hunari Castle or Hunadora Castle and is one of Romania's most famous and impressive medieval fortresses. It is located in Hunadora in the Transylvania region of southwest Romania. It is regarded as one of the largest and most spectacular gothic renaissance castles in Europe and a must-see historic landmark. This is Corvin Castle. It is the largest castle in Romania. It's one of the seven wonders of Romania. It is also one of the largest gothic renaissance castles in Europe. You can see the moat or it was kind of a moat. There's a river that goes all the way around and the bridge that goes from one side to the other. The down below area that they're redoing and doing the construction on is stone that's original. They're also redoing some of the other areas of the castle and we're gonna go explore it. The castle sits on a medieval fortress built in the 14th century and was transformed into a full castle beginning around 1446 by John Hunari. As you walk in you enter the large inner courtyard of the castle. From the main courtyard there's lots of different ways you could go to go explore. As you walk through the castle they have numbers. There's 37 different numbers and you could scan a QR code and they'll tell you about the history of each room that you're in. Okay we're just walked in we're gonna start right here in the north wing. We're on the number five we're gonna go all the way around. This room is on the ground floor and it was thought to be the kitchen. There's very little information about the kitchen in the castle. We're currently on the second floor balcony that overlooks the courtyard. From up here you have gorgeous views. This is a neat area because you could see some of the original castle up here and parts that they redid. We're in the golden room. This is where the king slept. The golden room is one of the castle's most elegant and symbolic interior spaces associated with nobility, luxury and power. We're in the castle's chapel right now. It's pretty. The castle chapel sits on the southeast part of the castle slightly elevated which tells you that it's meant to feel set apart and closer to heaven than the rest of the fortress. This was the family place to pray and not for the general population. The ladies chamber was a private residential space where noble women lived rested and carried out daily courtly life. This is the fireplace. This is the diet hall. It's one of the major ceremonial halls. There's three of them in this castle. And all the columns are marble like a pink marble. It's really pretty. We're going in the tower. We're currently in the tower. You can walk 360 degrees around and you have good views of the courtyard and all the surrounding city. From the Corbin castle towers you look over the Zalosti valley, the town of Hunedoara, rolling Transylvanian countryside and the castle's inner courtyards and roofs giving you a panoramic view. This is once used to spot enemies and control the surrounding land. We're now in the Capistrano tower. This fireplace is a medieval Hungarian piece. It's the only gothic fireplace left in this castle and of all Hungary. This is the blacksmith shop with some artwork that's been left there since 2019. We're heading through the hallway to Nebojsa tower. This tower is on the southwest side and was originally erected to defend the south side of the castle. After a lot of stairs we made it to the top of the tower. The south wing was built mainly in the 15th century and expanded later. It was designed as a residential and ceremonial area not just military defense. As you walk around the room you can see different artifacts from Romania in this time period. These are human remains discovered during archaeological work. The remains were found on a lower level thought to be a prison. This is one of the tower's beautiful spiraled staircases. The medieval spiral staircase were designed to spiral clockwise going up giving right-handed defenders more room to swing a sword. It also forced attackers to fight uphill in a cramped space. The staircase is narrow and steep and dimly lit with slit windows. The Bethlehem palace is a 17th century renaissance residential wing of Corvin castle. It was built by the Bethlehem prince to transform the medieval fortress into a more comfortable and prestigious palace. This is the house of ovens. It's the main kitchen. The white tower is a tall gothic tower located on the southeastern side of the castle that overlooks the valley and is one of the castle's oldest and most prominent defense structures. So the white tower behind me was the formal entrance into the castle. We're currently in the knight's hall. It is one of the major three kind of big halls in the castle and it was used for feasts. The knight's hall is a large medieval great hall used for banquets, meetings, ceremonies and receiving important guests. It was one of the main public spaces where power was displayed. The well at Corvin castle is 28 meters deep. The story says that three turkish prisoners dug the well for 15 years in exchange for their freedom but when it was time to be released the wife of the king decided to leave them behind and at the bottom of the well there's an inscription symbolizing broken promises. As you walk through this area you can see old pieces of the castle and they kind of save and preserve some of them. This is the lapidarium room that displays original stone fragments, arches, columns, carvings and decorative elements from damaged or demolished parts of the castle preserving its architectural history. Emotional impact. There's rumors that Vlad the Impaler was imprisoned here. Who knows if it's true but this is a prison. You can see how they hung them up and this is where they hung before they died. We're heading to the torture chamber right now. The torture chamber of the castle refers to its dungeon and prison rooms where captives were held and punished. In this room they show replicas of torture devices that were used in medieval practices. So we just finished visiting Corvin's castle. Amazing! It is so beautiful. You definitely need to check this castle out. This is what we envisioned Romania's castles to look like. Like this. Yeah this is why we came to Romania. This is really cool. I'm glad that we saw it. I hope you enjoyed exploring Corvin Castle with us. 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