Szilasi Ágota, H.: Örökségünk védelme és jövője 5. - Váraink. Múlt, jelen, jövő. A Dobó István Vármúzeumban 2019. április 25-26-án megrendezett Tudományos Konferencia tanulmánykötete - Studia Agriensia 38. (Eger, 2019)
Hatházi Gábor - Kovács Gyöngyi: A csókakői vár régészeti kutatása, 2014-2017
HATHÁZI GÁBOR - KOVÁCS GYÖNGYI Gábor Hatházi - Gyöngyi Kovács ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN THE CASTLE AT CSÓKAKŐ, 2014-2017 Built on a rocky plateau of the Vértes Mountains, Csókakő Castle is the single castle of medieval origin in County Fejér. It was built by the Csák kindred in the later thirteenth century. The castle enjoyed a prominent strategic position owing to the proximity of the road linking Székesfehérvár and Győr and it retained its military role up to the close of the seventeenth century. Lying some 25 km from Székesfehérvár, the lords of the fortress with extensive estates in the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries included prominent aristocratic families such as the Rozgonyis, the Kanizsais, Nádasdys and the Bakicses as well as the sovereign in some periods. The castle came under Ottoman control in 1543- 1544, which remained continuous until 1687, except for a few years during the Fifteen Years’ War ( 1593-1606). Major archaeological investigations and renovations were undertaken in the castle between 1996 and 2017. After 2014, when the castle was included in the National Castle Project, archaeological work accelerated. The last excavation season was completed in 2017. The study describes and discusses the investigations conducted in the lower castle between 2014 and 2017. The early, thirteenth-fourteenth century structures of Csókakő Castle extended over an area of roughly 600 m2 on the highest part of the rock plateau. The fifteenth century saw major construction work, in the wake of which the early castle was transformed into an upper castle (A). A lower castle (C, D, E, F-G,) and a castle chapel (B) were erected around it in areas lying 7 to 17 m lower, which covered a roughly 1400 m2 large area. The lower castle adjoined the early castle in the south and east, in an L-shaped layout. Three terraces were hewn into the rock to accommodate the new structures owing to the slope’s steepness. The upper castle, the chapel and the higher-lying terraces were linked with stairs and side-paths branching from the fifteenth-century road leading to the castle’s interior. The excavations conducted on the upper terrace (D) indicate that the road in its interior was constructed in the Middle Ages: the thirteenth-century features outline the road that had once led to the thirteenth-century castle’s entrance, whose location remains unidentified. A series of buildings (D2) flanked the terraces northern side in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries. The road led to a fifteenth-century smaller inner courtyard (D6), whose eastern wall was pierced by a vaulted gate (D7), which was walled up at some later time in the same century. The architecture of the middle terrace (E) was dominated by a fifteenth-century Gothic palace whose construction can be dated to the time of the Rozgonyis (1430-1496). In the seventeenth century, it had a djami (El) in its western part, which had probably been erected in 1599 in the light of the recent re-assessment of the historical data. The single contemporary groundplan of this building (and on the castle itself) was probably drawn in 1601-1602 and can currently be found in the Baden-Württemberg Archives in Karlsruhe. The djami is a remarkable Ottoman-period architectural relic not only of the castle, but of Hungary, too. The Gothic palace (E2) of trapezoidal groundplan had an east-west main axis and had an upper storey on the testimony of the observed features. The building underwent a profound transformation during the Ottoman period: a series of smaller rooms (E3) were created on the ground floor. The road leading to the castle’s interior on the lower terrace (F-G) was lined with buildings in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries. The sketched groundplan in the Karlsruhe archives shows two buildings along the southern castle wall and a third one in the castle’s north-eastern part; all three date from the sixteenth century, from the Ottoman period. The archaeological investigations revealed that the buildings erected along the southern castle wall (F1-F2) were transformed into a single building in the seventeenth century. The building in the north-eastern part had a wooden board floor (G2). The castle’s southern wall and south-eastern bastion (H) were erected during the Bakics period (1528/34-1543/44), similarly to the cellared building, whose cellar (Hi) was excavated. The cistern (H2) in the lower castle was established west of the cellar in 1643; the medieval paving of the road leading to the castle’s interior was destroyed at this time. 49
