Banffy Castle
Banffy Castle is located in Bontida, Romania, near the village of Cluj-Napoca. The estate was a royal donation received by the Hungarian Banffy family in the 14thcentury. A manor house from the 15th-16thcenturies once sat on the site. The castle was built from the 16thcentury to the mid-19thcentury, so it has Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassical, and Neo-Gothic features. The Renaissance and Baroque designs remain dominant. Located on the right bank of the Somesul Mic River, Banffy Castle was once surrounded by walls and towers and could only be accessed through a seven-story gatehouse, which was changed in the early 19thcentury. The Banffy family destroyed the gatehouse to make a water mill for the entire village. In the 18thcentury, Denes Banffy had the French Park created with geometric shapes and symmetrical alleys. In the 19thcentury, to counterbalance the rigid forms of the French Park, Jozsef Banffy had a romantic landscape designed to include winding paths, thickets with free-growing trees, and vegetation. The last inhabitant was Count Miklos Banffy, who fled the castle in 1944 to escape the German occupation. The German soldiers looted, burned the building, destroying much of it. By 1948, the buildings on the estate continued to decline under communism. In 1990, the castle was declared a historical monument. Conservation and restoration began in 1999 under the Romanian Ministry of Culture and the Hungarian Ministry of Heritage. In 2001, the Transylvania Trust was overseeing the castle, which since 2008, is back under the Banffy family’s ownership. An Art Café was added to the former kitchen of the building, and an education center is located in the Miklos building. The former chapel, stables, and main buildings are used for various venues, including concerts and weddings. Since 2013, the Electric Castle music festival has been held at Banffy Castle. Banffy Castle is open to the public. Cluj-Napoca is where my heroine Aria stays before heading to the Bermuda Triangle of the Hoia Forest in Dimensional Shift. Centuries ago, the castle was known as the Versailles of Transylvania.
