Mikes-kastély

Cisteiu de Mureș, Romania, Romania

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Mikes Castle (Mikes-kastély) in Cisteiu de Mureș (Magyarcsesztve), Alba County, Romania, traces its origins to a Baroque single-storey manor built in 1796 by Mihály Mikes VI, a member of the prominent Szekler noble Mikes family that acquired nearby lands in 1649. Expanded mid-19th century with a grand Neoclassical "large palace" commissioned by Count János Mikes IV—including an imposing entrance gate and vast barn—the estate suffered devastation during the 1848 revolutions when revolutionaries ransacked the property. Nationalized under communism as an agricultural cooperative headquarters and briefly a kindergarten post-1989, the once-monumental complex rapidly deteriorated through looting of bricks, roofs, and fixtures, leaving only crumbling walls, Doric column fragments, and overgrown ruins amid grazing lands today.