HISTORY OF BOJNICE CASTLE
The castle is situated on a travertine mound above the town of Bojnice, in the central part of the Hornonitrianska kotlina (basin).
The castle is situated on a travertine mound above the town of Bojnice, in the central part of the Hornonitrianska kotlina (basin).
Prehistoric and Early Middle Ages
Archaeological research uncovered the northern part of the castle moat (at the entrance to the castle) and confirmed up to 11 cultural layers of prehistoric Neanderthal man in the Pleistocene (older Quaternary).
Mammoth teeth and tusk of a young female mammoth from Bojnice (collections of the Museum of Upper Nitra).
This was still in the period when the thermal spring was active, and the travertine mound continued to grow. This discovery places Bojnice among the most important sites of Palaeolithic human settlement in Europe.
Archaeological research by J. Barta in 1966–1967 identified 11 cultural layers of the presenceof Neanderthal man in the castle moat on the northern side of the travertine mound.
The strategically advantageous position of the travertine mound was used by the people of the Púchov culture in the Early Iron Age to build a hillfort, which was later (from the 6th century AD) also used by the Slavs, while they adapted it to their needs.
The Bojnice area was located on an important north-south trade route. In the 9th century – in the Great Moravian period – this was already matched by a relatively large Slavic settlement.
The Great Moravian gord (i.e., a fortified settlement) of Bojnice had to be large enough to shelter all the inhabitants in the event of an approaching threat. A double wooden palisade fortified with stone and earth, reinforced with wooden armour and supports separated the castle hill itself from the area below it. In its place, in the later period, a medieval castle was built, which was further considerably rebuilt and enlarged several times, thus burying the evidence of the form of the Great Moravian stronghold inside it.
Slavic pit-houses.
Slavic pit-houses.
In the Early Middle Ages, Slavic inhabitants of Bojnice engaged especially in tar production.
Up: a diagram of a tar furnace; down: a tar container from Bojnice.
