CASTLE (VÁR) AND ZRÍNYI MIKLÓS MÚZEUM

The castle is a great place for a stroll. It tells the story of the siege of Szigetvár and its heroes. A few steps from the castle is the memorial to the liberation of Hungary by Soviet troops.

Following the bloody battle against the Turks in 1566, Szigetvár and its fortress became a symbol of Hungarian heroism. The fortress, built on an island in the middle of ancient marshland, is a heavy square structure with bastions at all four corners. At the time, Suleiman the Magnificent, sultan of the Ottoman Empire since 1520, had allied himself with Francis ^I against Charles V. On his way to attack Vienna in Austria, Suleiman wanted to take "this little molehill" of a fortress. In less than two weeks, his army of almost 100,000 men built a bridge over the Dráva, south of Szigetvár. But this moated stronghold, built on marshland, proved very difficult to take. The heroic resistance of Miklós Zrínyi at the head of his army of 25,000 Hungarians and Croats still moves Hungarians today. The Turks had to lay siege to Szigetvár for 33 days. During this siege, Suleiman the Magnificent, then at the height of his glory, succumbed to a heart attack. To avoid any danger of internal struggles for power, the Ottoman chiefs kept Suleiman's corpse upright in a chair until his son could take command of the army. But supplies in the fortress eventually ran out, and the Habsburgs in Vienna were slow to send reinforcements. So Zrínyi and his heroic resistance fighters set fire to the fortress and threw themselves into a final losing battle, a sacrifice that saved Vienna from Turkish domination. During this great butchery, Zrínyi's army was completely annihilated; its fighters were elevated to the rank of martyrs. However, the Ottomans also suffered enormous losses; a quarter of the Turkish army perished in the cursed swamps. Despite their victory, the Turks were too weakened to continue their march on Vienna and abandoned their plans. They had to make do with Szigetvár, where they settled and rebuilt the fortress they had won so dearly. In the castle courtyard, they built a mosque, the remains of which are still visible (Ottoman gates, Koranic inscriptions...).