Kremnica Town Castle

About this place

Kremnica Town Castle is a group of historic buildings on a hill above the main square of Kremnica in central Slovakia, about 18 km west of Banská Bystrica in a straight line. Kremnica is an old mining town famous for its gold and its mint. The castle is really a complex of medieval buildings with different purposes, built up gradually over three centuries, from the mid-13th to the late 15th century. A Romanesque church and a round charnel chapel first stood here; in the late 14th century a wall was built around them, enclosing a palace for the royal chamber count and a store for mined gold and newly struck coins. It gained a double ring of walls, an entrance tower to the north, a small tower to the west and a semicircular bastion to the east. Inside the stone walls rises the Gothic Church of Saint Catherine with its green spire, ringed by round towers with red tiled roofs, and from the top the view opens over the colourful town, its green square and the surrounding mountains. Visitors walk the castle courtyard and walls, climb the church tower for the view over Kremnica, then head down to the main square and the nearby coin museum.