Visit Bojnice

Why visit Bojnice

Bojnice Castle is the most photogenic castle in Slovakia — a perfect fairy-tale silhouette of pointed turrets, dramatic red-tiled roofs, and rounded towers perched on a wooded hilltop above the small spa town of Bojnice in western Slovakia. The original medieval fortress dates to the 12th century, but the building you see today is the romantic neo-Gothic transformation completed in the 1880s and 1890s by Count Ján Frantisšek Pálffy, who travelled extensively through France and modelled his beloved Slovakian property on the Loire Valley châteaux of Chambord and Pierrefonds (with a particular nod to Mad Ludwig II of Bavaria's Neuschwanstein). The interior is jewel-box-perfect: a magnificent Gothic Hall, a hexagonal Renaissance-style chapel, gilded reception rooms, and the famous 'Bojnice Altar' — a 14th-century Italian Trecento masterpiece by Nardo di Cione. The castle hosts Slovakia's most beloved cultural event — the International Festival of Ghosts and Spirits each May — when costumed actors perform medieval mystery plays in the courtyards. The town below has the country's oldest zoo (founded 1955, with 350 species) and the small Bojnice mineral spa baths still working today (used since the 12th century).