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A brief overview

The legend of Khust castle

According to legend, the first owner of Khust Castle was Voivode Khust. Once he went hunting with the army, leaving a small guard in the fortress. And at that time, the fortress was occupied by Tatar troops. Many people died then, others were captured. They managed to take Gust’s wife and his son with them, leaving only their little daughter. When Gust entered the deserted fortress, he vowed to kill all the Tatars he saw.

Years passed. Gust became an old man, and his daughter became a real beauty. There was no news about the captured relatives. All this time, Gust’s son lived at the khan’s court. His mother soon died in captivity. One day, Andriy, or Skandor, accidentally met his countryman, who told him about the beauty of his native land and persuaded the young man to run away home. Ahead of them was a difficult and dangerous road. When they approached the Khust castle, the old countryman fell ill and died. After burying his friend, Andrii went home. During the journey, he suddenly saw a horsewoman nearby, followed by a big bear.

Without thinking long, the young man took out his dagger and killed the beast. In the fight, the bear tore the boy’s clothes and a birthmark became visible on his bare shoulder. By her, the girl recognized her own brother and threw herself into his arms. This was seen by the manager of the castle, who was secretly in love with the beauty. He immediately reported to the voivode how he saw his daughter in the arms of a Tatar.

Faithful to his promise, Gust ordered the young man to be beheaded. The servants grabbed Andrei, dragged him to the top opposite the fortress and immediately executed him. When the voivode came, he saw his daughter, maddened by despair, and recognized his own son by the birthmark on the body of the executed young man. He grabbed the dagger and plunged it into his heart. Gust died on the body of his dead son. Their blood, mixed, turned the entire peak purple, which has since been called the Red Mountain.

Another creepy legend says that Count Dracula is connected to Khust Castle! The Hungarian king gave the castle to the knight Drago, the ancestor of Vlad the Impaler, whom Bram Stoker called Count Dracula in his novel of the same name. Due to clashes with neighbors, Drag left the castle, and Count Dracula was born in Transylvania. But some sources say that Tepes still lived in Khust Castle.

History of Khust Castle

Initially, there was a wooden fortification on the site of the Khust Castle. Later, by order of the Hungarian kings, the fortress was rebuilt and made of stone. This reconstruction took a whole century from 1090 to 1191. Today, the remains of the fortress can barely be seen through the trees. In the Middle Ages, Khust Castle was known as an impregnable fortress.

During the Tatar-Mongol invasion in 1242, the castle was destroyed, but soon it was completely restored. The main purpose of the fortress was to control salt caravans along the Tisza. At the end of the 14th century, the owner of the castle Ioann Pereni told his son “Salt without Khust, and Khust without salt are worthless” .

After 1526, the Khust fortress became part of the Principality of Transylvania. The owner of the castle became Janos Zapolyai, who was proclaimed king of Hungary by part of the Hungarian nobility. Since then, Khust Castle has become the arena of wars between the Transylvanian Principality and the Habsburgs.

In 1556, the castle was besieged by the army of Andre Bathory. There were only 800 defenders of the fortress, who during the long siege suffered from a lack of food and soon began to die of scurvy. On January 20, 1557, the castle garrison capitulated. At that time, only 12 defenders of the castle remained alive.

In 1577, the castle was thoroughly reconstructed. So when the Turkish troops entered Maramoroshchyna in 1660, the janissaries did not dare to take the Khust stronghold, but sent a delegation to it, which included the traveler and author of the multi-volume “Book of Travels” Evliya Celebi. He compared the Khust castle to the Iskander fortress, because the height of its towers reached the heavens.

In 1709, the All-Transylvania Diet of supporters of Prince Ferenc II Rakocza took place in the fortress. During the Kurut uprising of 1703-1711, the fortress was badly damaged and gradually began to lose its strategic role. On July 3, 1766, lightning struck the powder storehouse of the fortress. The explosion caused significant damage to the castle, and the royal garrison abandoned it. The fortress has not been restored since then and is gradually falling into disrepair. Several institutions in Khust, as well as a Catholic church, were built from the stones of the castle. The bell and tower chimes of the fortress were also moved to the church.

Don’t test the strength of your four-wheeled friends trying to get to the top of the castle hill. Driving the steep serpentine that wraps around the mountain, about halfway to the castle ruins, near the cemetery, there is a place to leave the car to continue the journey on foot. According to legend, a watchtower once stood on this place, from which an underground passage led to the castle.

How to get to Khust Castle

Khust Castle is located in Khust on Zamkovy Street. The castle can be reached from the railway station in 50 minutes. Khust can be reached by bus from Mukachevo, Rakhov, Uzhgorod, Kyiv, Ternopil and Odesa. You can also get there by train from Uzhhorod, Lviv or Ivano-Frankivsk.

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