Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. Az István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 22. 1982-1983 – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1985)

Die Anjovinen in Mitteleuropa - Czeglédy Ilona: The results of the exavations of the Castle of Diósgyőr. p. 33–38.

stone, the machicolation system running inside the wall and the inner face of the outer wall. A new approach staircase, called "King's staircase" was built from the western entrance toward the palace in front of the north facade. Before this a huge tower was built to highlight and protect the entrance. From the thick footing the conclusion can be drawn that once there had been a very high tower with several floors. The palace wings had a machicolation with moulding. The towers had a level above the wings each consisting of two vaulted rooms and a terrace. Each floor of the towers was encircled by machicolations with moulding. A pair of gatehouses rose from the outer wall circle of the castle towards the four cardinal points with two additional floors housing a vaulted room and a terrace above it. The outer castle was surrounded by a 25 m wide moat and behind the countermure there was a 50 m wide glacis (rivellino). The "contra scarpe" of the moat assured proportioned defence. The countermure itself was a gabled part of the fortification partially as supporting wall of the earthwork and partially continued in the arising wall. At each of the four twin gatehouses, between the towers a bridge crossed the moat, but the western entrance was the main entrance and so it remained throughout the centuries. The 14

th century royal castle of Diósgyőr is the first appearence of a planned, large-scale building of both strategic and dwelling value on the territory of Hungary. It is the symbiosis of a fortification and a town palace: the castlepalace. The period it was built was the golden age of Hungarian Gothic art. The representation and the ideological function is expressed by the architectural ground-plan and the superstructure. This compound geometric ensemble simplified and matured to the utmost is the result of an exceptional historical demand where historical préfigurations are summarised in one complex. Though this castle is built on a rock-hill, in a certain way it is a mountain castle

—nevertheless, we can recognize its archetype in the castles of the plains and on banks of rivers. This duality can be felt in Diósgyőr. The inner castle adopts to the rock- hill a fortification even more regular than the archetypes through overcoming the differences in level, the natural irregularities by considerably groundworks. The beveled square of the inner castle following the cliff is deformed into an irregular octagon.

—In the 14

th century most of the castles fall into royal hands

—power is there where the fortifications are. Though urbanization this process breaks up, power is concentrated there where castle and town can form a symbiosis. (Fig. 3.) The castle of Diósgyőr is the first and last step in the transition from castle to the development of a town, the adoptation of a town palace into the scenery, to a castle region spread to townsize. It was partly because of the opposition of the citisens of towns that the Anjous turned also Visegrád instead of Buda almost to their seat by building beside the mountain fortification a town palace, too, a building with a closed yard where court life could be lived. The regular arrangement, the functional and ideological representation assured by symmetry are associated with the royal buildings. If we look for the nearest analogies of the Diósgyőr castle, they are supplied by lowland castles, those of the to valley. The castle of the Este's in Ferrara and that of the Gonzaga's in Mantova are castle-palaces with four corner turrets surrounded by a moat. The castles of Parma, Fontanellato, Modena and the town of Montagnana show the same arrangement. It is difficult to trace the origin of the type. So far as predecessors one considered the castles of the Teutonic Order and the possibility of eventual Hungarian development was also raised. Lately Jolán Balogh drew attention to the fact that the regular type was spread all over Europe in 14

th century royal architecture, (see Sorgue, the castle of the Popes of Avignon) At the seats of our Anjou kings (Diósgyőr—Zólyom) great castles with square form ground-plan were built in the 14

th century. If we survey the group of other Hungarian castles with four towers and regular square groundplan: Aranyosmedgyes. Brunóc, Egervár, Nagybicse, Pozsony, Radnót, Sárospatak, Várpalota or Kismarton we find that they are all younger than the Gothic period of Diósgyőr. Most of them were strongly rebuilt. It is only Zólyom which resembles Diósgyőr regarding both its ground-plan, its details and the time of building. (Fig. 4.) At the royal seats of the second half of the 14

th century, that is, in Buda, Esztergom, Székesfehérvár or even in Visegrád we find no such organically planned construction systems like those of Diósgyőr and Zólyom. The royal castle of Székesfehérvár during the period of the Anjous can not be reconstructed. Both in Esztergom and in Buda, where the remains of the royal residence survived, we can see that they were not built according to a single new organic plan but were formed using different earlier constructions and became "grown castles". The constructing work of the Anjous in Hungary was on the one closely related to Italy, on the other hand to the Prague centre hand of Charles IV. and through this to Avignon. The Diósgyőr castle itself the square block with the four corner turrets and the puritan stone cross windows show Mediterranean, Italian influence. The vault keystones with boltel moulding with fillet of the one time inner palace or the consols with mask call to mind the influence of the Parler workshop in Prague. The hall of the knights refers to the interrogation hall of the palace of the Popes of Avignon. We can say that the Diósgyőr castle is built according to the purest arranging principles and

—thanks to the lack of later secondary structures

—remained as one of the most intact examples of the Hungarian but also of the universal history of castle building. This royal residence is the first Hungarian castle palace combining a knight's castle proportioned with slim towers with a Mediterranean representative and comfortable palace rising from the protorenaissence call for life. 36