Colț Fortress

Colț Fortress stands on Vârful Colțului, within the village of Suseni in Râu de Mori commune, on the DJ 686 road at the entrance to the Râușor valley, about 3 km from Râu de Mori. It was built on a rocky spur of the Retezat Mountains with very steep slopes, from which the valley could be watched. Colț Monastery stands beside it, across the stream. The fortress was built by the Cândea knyazes, a family later known as Kendeffy. It grew around a square residential tower (donjon), to which an enclosure wall and further towers were added, on an irregular plan following the rock; the donjon dates from the mid-fourteenth century, while the national List of Historic Monuments dates the ensemble to the fifteenth century. It is regarded as the strongest knyaz fortress in Transylvania. The Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi described it in the mid-seventeenth century as a fortress built on a high rock, with a gate facing the Hațeg plain. Today remains of the walls and of the residential tower survive, while some of the curtain walls have collapsed into the valley. A themed path of about one kilometre climbs from Suseni, with illustrated panels by Șerban Andreescu retelling Jules Verne's novel "The Castle of the Carpathians", for which the fortress has been suggested as a possible inspiration, and panels on the biodiversity and heritage of the area, in Romanian and English. The fortress is part of the Hațeg Country UNESCO Global Geopark. The ensemble is a Category A historic monument, LMI code HD-II-a-A-03458, with the fortified enclosure (HD-II-m-A-03458.01) and the residential tower (HD-II-m-A-03458.02) in ruins.