Sárvár--Nádasdy Castle

For this cultural excursion we traveled about one hour towards Lake Balaton to Sárvár to see the castle. This is the bridge over what used to be the moat.

It was getting close to closing time, but I kept the gate open so we could get in.

This was the castle of a Protestant count. Here the Protestant presses produced the first books in Hungarian in the early 1600's.

The knight's hall has paintings on the ceilings depicting various battles with the Turks as they invaded and occupied Hungary in the 1500's and 1600's. Count Nádasdy, the owner of this castle was one of the heroes who slowed their advance.

On the walls are pictures of Old Testament stories. This one is of Abraham sacrificing his son.

The other rooms have paintings on the walls too. Even the picture frames are just part of the paintings.

The wall paneling under this painting is not wood at all. It's just part of the painting

The porcelain dishes were interesting too. Some of the plates told a story when you laid them out. Perhaps you can see how these tell of hunting a deer--from trapping it to killing it.

This silver cream pitcher reminds me of the horse and the alligator pitchers that Chrissy and Debbie made in their ceramics class.

Perhaps the most famous or infamous former inhabitant of this castle was the "Blood Countess" Erzsébet Báthory, sometimes known as Countess Dracula. When her husband was away fighting Turks, she thought she discovered that when she bathed herself with the blood of young maidens, it kept her skin young. After her husband died, she had a team of procurers keep her supplied with virgins so she could drain their blood and shower and bathe in it. After more than 650 maidens disappeared in the surrounding countryside over the next six years, people got suspicious. A relative investigated, and discovered what was happening. After her trial, her accomplices were executed, but to "protect the family name" she was cemented into a dungeon with just an opening to give her food until she died four years later. They hid the record of her trial (again to protect the family name) so the full story didn't come out until more than a hundred years later.