Malbork Castle

Malbork Castle, officially the Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork, is a massive Brick Gothic fortress in the Polish town of Malbork. It was built starting in the 1200s and greatly expanded in the 1300s, and it holds the title of the world’s largest castle by land area, as well as a UNESCO World Heritage designation. The Teutonic Order, a German Catholic crusading order, constructed it as an Ordensburg fortress and called it Marienburg after Mary, the mother of Jesus. During the Thirteen Years' War in 1457, Bohemian mercenaries sold the castle to Poland’s King Casimir IV to settle debts. It then became one of several Polish royal residences and housed Polish offices and institutions, with a brief interruption under Swedish occupation, until the First Partition of Poland in 1772. After that, it remained under German control for more than 170 years, until 1945, though it fell into disrepair as military advances made it obsolete.

The Teutonic Order was founded in 1191 in Acre, in what is now Israel. After the last major Crusader stronghold in the Levant fell in 1291, the Order moved to Venice before eventually arriving in Prussia. The castle was built after the Order conquered Old Prussia, around 1222 to 1274, mainly to secure their control following the suppression of the Great Prussian Uprising in 1274. No original construction documents survive, so historians have pieced together the building phases from architecture, administrative records, and later histories. Work continued until about 1300 under Commander Heinrich von Wilnowe. The castle sits on the southeastern bank of the Nogat River. Its importance grew after the Teutonic Knights took Gdańsk and Eastern Pomerania in 1308, moving their administrative center from Elbing to Marienburg. Grand Master Siegfried von Feuchtwangen, arriving from Venice, oversaw the next building phase. In 1309, amid the persecution of the Knights Templar and the takeover of Danzig, he moved the Order’s headquarters to the Prussian part of its monastic state, choosing Marienburg for its convenient location on the Nogat in the Vistula Delta, as water transport was essential.

The castle was expanded repeatedly to accommodate the growing number of knights, eventually becoming the largest fortified Gothic building in Europe, covering nearly 21 hectares. It features several subdivisions and many layers of defensive walls, divided into three separate castles—High, Middle, and Lower—separated by dry moats and towers. At its peak, it housed about 3,000 brothers in arms. The outermost walls enclose 21 hectares, four times the area of Windsor Castle, with the developed part designated as a World Heritage Site covering 18.038 hectares. Its position on the Nogat allowed easy access for barges and trading ships from the Vistula and the Baltic. The Teutonic Knights collected tolls from passing ships and held a monopoly on amber trade. After the town joined the Hanseatic League, many Hanseatic meetings took place there.

In 1361, the future Grand Duke of Lithuania, Kęstutis, was briefly imprisoned in the castle. Polish King Casimir III the Great visited in 1365. In the summer of 1410, after the Order’s defeat at the Battle of Grunwald, the castle was besieged. Heinrich von Plauen successfully defended it during the Siege of Marienburg, though the town outside was destroyed. By 1456, during the Thirteen Years' War, the Order faced severe financial trouble. Its cities revolted against higher taxes meant to cover ransoms and war costs. Long-unpaid Bohemian mercenaries agreed to sell Malbork and leave, compensated with funds raised by Polish General Stibor de Poniec of Ostoja in Danzig. In 1457, King Casimir IV Jagiellon granted Danzig several privileges in thanks for its wartime support and entered Malbork Castle in triumph. The town’s mayor, Bartholomäus Blume, held out against Polish forces for three more years, but was captured and executed in 1460. A monument to him was erected in 1864.

In 1466, both castle and town became part of the Polish Malbork Voivodeship in Royal Prussia. From 1457, it served as one of several Polish royal residences and the seat of Polish offices and institutions until the First Partition of Poland in 1772. UNESCO designated the Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork and its museum a World Heritage Site in December 1997. It is one of two such sites in north-central Poland, alongside the Medieval Town of Toruń, founded in 1231. The castle was also named one of Poland’s official national Historic Monuments on 8 September 1994, with its listing maintained by the National Heritage Board of Poland.