What Remains of Glory
The castle, located near Cluj, Romania was begun in the 14th century and was owned by the Banffy family almost from the beginning. They were a prosperous family: active in politics, forestry, agriculture.
The castle was the finest in Transylvania until WWII when the area was occupied by the Germans. They gutted the castle of its treasures and destroyed much of the structure as well. Its ruin continued under communism. I read in one account that it was used to house the mentally ill or retarded. Not so much to care for them, according to the English woman who wrote the article, but simply to house them.
The present-day owner of the castle, a surviving member of the Banffy family, is hoping to restore the structure to it’s former glory but money is lacking. A caretaker told my guide, Daniel Gheorghita (http://felixromania.com/ ) that she now resides in Tangier, Morocco. Can’t you see her? I imagine her with long red tresses, dyed, as she is now elderly, wearing gowns, that although from an earlier era, are so well made that they are still stylish. She stares from her Tangier balcony, over the blue/green mediterranean and remembers the snows of Transylvania and hears the voices from those halcyon days.
Miklos Banffy wrote Transylvanian Trilogy, a novel of the last days of his family’ s influence. It reminds me of War and Peace, but is easier to read. An interesting blog about the last days of Transylvanian royalty is here: http://patrickleighfermor.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/paddys-introduction-to-the-transylvanian-trilogy-by-miklos-banffy/
I gave this photo an infra-red look to lend credence to the legend that the ghosts of German soldiers linger in the castle.