Trakai Island Castle

Trakai Island Castle sits on an island in Lake Galvė, in the town of Trakai, Lithuania. It was a key stronghold of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, valued for its strategic position. Grand Duke Kęstutis ordered the stone castle built in the 1300s, and his son Vytautas the Great finished the main work around 1409. Vytautas died there in 1430.

The castle went up in stages. In the first phase, during the late 14th century, Kęstutis built it on the largest of the three lake islands to expand and strengthen the nearby Trakai Peninsula Castle. He moved his main home and treasury there. The Teutonic Knights badly damaged it in 1377. After Kęstutis was killed, a power struggle between Jogaila and Vytautas led to sieges from both sides. Once they reconciled, the second phase began, lasting until 1409. This was the castle’s major expansion. During a truce with the Teutonic Order, the Order’s stonemason Radike oversaw some of the work, four years before the Battle of Grunwald.

In the second phase, two wings were added, and a six-storey keep, 35 meters high, rose on the southern side. The keep had movable gates that separated the palace from the rest of the castle. It served as a defensive structure, a chapel, and living quarters. It connected to the multi-storey Ducal Palace, which had an inner yard with wooden galleries running along the inner wall, allowing access to support facilities without entering the palace. The entire southern wing of the palace was the Ducal Hall, about 10 by 21 meters—only the Upper Palace in the Vilnius Castle Complex was larger. The main building material was red Gothic bricks, with stone blocks used only for foundations and upper parts of walls and towers. The castle was decorated with glazed roof tiles, burned bricks, and stained glass windows. Its overall style after this phase was Gothic with some Romanesque touches.

The third phase came in the early 1400s. Walls were thickened to 2.5 meters and raised with extra firing galleries. Three major defensive towers were built on the corners; the south-western one also served as a prison. The top floors housed soldiers and many cannons. A main gatehouse was added, also with movable gates, and reinforced with firing galleries. Near the inner walls, stables, kitchens, and other support buildings were constructed. At that time, Lake Galvė’s water level was several meters higher than today.