Travel Diary - Day 6 : Malbork Castle, Headquarter of the Teutonic ...

Hello lovely Steemians !

Today I would like to invite you to Day 6 of my Travel Diary. After seeing the beautiful city of Prague, I decided to travel to another great capital city, Vilnius in Lithuania. But before I show you this other amazing city I am going to present to you my visit of Malbork Castle, which was on my way there and a place I definitly wanted to visit.

Already the first view at the castle from the outside was quite appealing to me and made me want to go inside. I really enjoyed to walk across the bridge into the castle where this massive bars were already waiting for me. Also the doors looked quite massive, but luckily everything was open to me to go inside ^^

Malbork Castle, "Ordensburg Marienburg"

The fortress of Malbork was founded in the 13th century, in 1274 to be precise, by the Knights of the Teutonic Order. The "Ordensburg Marienburg" as it was called in those days, was used as the Orders headquarters and was the largest Gothic fortress in whole europe.

The statues that you can see here are the Grand Masters of the Teutonic Order (Die Hochmeister des Deutschen Orden), which names are Herrmann von Salza, Winrich von Kniprode, Siegfried von Feuchtwangen and Albrecht von Brandenburg.

Teutonic Order, "Deutscher Ritterorden" :

The Teutonic Order was founded in 1190 as a catholic religeous military order. The name of the fortress derives from their patron saint, Virgin Mary. The Teutonic Orders main task was to aid christians on their pilgrimages to the "Holy Land" and to establish hospitals on their way. Their headquarter fortress had a overall size of 21 ha (210000 m²), which is huuuuge, and hosted approximately 3,000 "brothers in arms".

It was really a nice walk through the various alleys and roads inside the castle and sometimes it felt like I was visiting a park. I hope you can get an good impression for yourself by looking at the pictures.

UNESCO's World Heritage :

The "Ordensburg Marienburg" is the world’s largest brick castle and one of the most impressive of its kind in Europe. Unfortunately, during the World War II, the castle was destroyed up to over 50%. But luckily it was decided to restore the whole complex. Since then restorations has been ongoing and nowadays the castle and its included museum are listed as one of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.

The sidewalks on the balcony around the inner courtyard were really nicely designed and I really loved that gothic style, so that I spend nearly an hour in this area alone.

My Impression :

For me, who likes history, even worked as a medievil reenactor, and was reading tons of books about the medievil times in europe the visit of this place was an amazing adventure. As this was the headquarter of the Teutonic Order and the largest Gothic fortress in europe this is a historically outstanding location. The restauration of this place is done really good and professionel and this red brick look is really beautiful.

One thing, that I was really puzzled about is that the kitchen was so small and overloaded with equiptment. While having in mind, that there once have to feed 3000 hungry "brothers in arms" at once, the kitchen seemed far to small for me. But what really amazed me, was that the main hall even had a complete underfloor heating. This is an extraordinary feature for the 13th century and they probablyhad to burn a lot of wood to heat up their ovens. You can even find a hole in the wall of the main hall from a cannon shot that hit the hall once during an assault attack.

They also have a little museum there that you can visit. This one hosts everything, from weaponary to everyday objects, but also several amazing amber masterpieces ! I am only showing my favorite one here ;)

They are also still parts left which are under renovation and I would like to show you some pictures, so that you get an impression of how it looked before they invested this tremendeous amound of time and work into this huge project. I am so glad that they decided to do so ^^

Thank You !

I hope that you enjoyed the 6th day of my Travel Diary featuring the great historical masterpiece, the Malbork Castle. I would like to thank you all for reading my travel diary and for supporting me until now with your upvotes and kind comments. If you want to see more, just stay tuned to see the next day ^^