Ostry Kamen

Buková, Trnava District, Slovakia, Slovakia

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Ostry Kamen Castle, perched on a rocky outcrop above Buková in Slovakia's Trnava District, was constructed in the late 13th century as a royal Hungarian border fortress to guard the vital Bohemian Road trade route from Buda to Prague through the Little Carpathians. First documented in 1273, it featured an initial oblong residential tower with gate, later expanded in the 14th-16th centuries under noble families like Neukenreyter, Czobor, Bakič, and Révay with outer wards, bastions, a moat, drawbridge, and cistern amid property feuds resolved by Emperor Charles V in 1554. Abandoned after the early 18th-century Rákóczi uprising when imperial forces occupied it, the Gothic-Renaissance ruins—including wall fragments and bastions—now serve as a hiking destination overlooking the scenic valley.