Veres Gábor szerk.: Agria 45. (Az Egri Múzeum Évkönyve - Annales Musei Agriensis, 2009)
Giber Mihály: Adatok az egri püspökvár középkori építéstörténetéhez II.
Mihály Giber The Castle's Late Medieval Defensive System Of the written sources currently known to us there are none referring to Eger Castle which date earlier than the 14 t h century. There are also no written references known to us referring either to the size or the extent of the 14 t h century castle. Even today one cannot be sure whether any of the walls dating from the 14 , h century can be identified with the earliest layers of those castle walls still in existence, or whether these too only date from the 15 t h century. We can nevertheless be sure that the current castle walls were in existence during the second half of the 15 t h century, as it was from these walls that the fortress's new defensive system was extended during the 16 t h century. The current castle precincts form only the western half of the original extent of the late medieval bishop's castle and the 16th-17th century fortress. The eastern half of the one-time castle was demolished in 1702, to be replaced (on the hillside to the east of what is now the railway line and the road running alongside it) by a densely populated suburb. Anyone visiting the castle today enters the western part of the late medieval castle, coming face to face with the interior part of the early modern fortress. It is possible to reconstruct the northern, western, southwestern and southern walls of the medieval castle. The bastions at the northern and southern ends of the eastern wall of the present castle, however, together with its tunnels and subterranean gun chambers, were built to the plans of Ottavio Baldigara during the final third of the 16 t h century. There are signs that in the late Middle Ages the castle had nothing but a single protective wall about 8-10 metres high and 1.40-2.20 metres thick, which was accompanied at specific points by towers of a significantly greater height and three gates. Although we know of two gateways on the territory of the present-day castle, the sources from the end of the Middle Ages mention the castle's three gates: porta parva (small gate), porta magna (great gate) and the porta lignea (wooden gate). The positive identification of the castle gates and any correspondence between the written and archaeological source material can only be made in the case of the wooden gateway, that once stood in the northern wall. 54
