Deva Fortress

Deva Fortress stands on the summit of Citadel Hill (Dealul Cetății), a 378 m volcanic cone that dominates the city of Deva and the Mureș valley. Traces of Neolithic, Bronze Age and Early Iron Age settlement have been found on the hill. The medieval fortress complex is a listed historic monument (code HD-II-a-A-03216), and the archaeological site on the southern slope is listed under code HD-I-s-B-03149. The fortress was built in the mid-thirteenth century, after the Mongol invasion, under King Béla IV of Hungary. It is first documented in 1269, when King Stephen, Béla IV's son, mentioned "castrum Dewa" in a grant to Count Chyl of Câlnic. At the end of the thirteenth century it was the residence of the Voivodes of Transylvania Roland Borșa and Ladislaus Kán, and after 1315 it returned to King Charles Robert of Anjou. In 1444 the fortress and its estate of 56 villages passed to John Hunyadi. In 1579 the Unitarian bishop Francis David died in the fortress prison. From 1713 the fortress was converted into a bastioned fortification, with further strengthening in 1717-1719. In 1784 it was attacked during the peasant uprising led by Horea, Cloșca and Crișan. During the revolution of 1848-1849 it was held by an Austrian garrison and then by the Hungarian revolutionaries. On 13 August 1849 the powder magazine exploded, bringing down the entire eastern side of the fortress, which was never rebuilt as a fortification. Today the ruins of three enclosures can be seen: the first, oval in shape, on the summit, the second following an irregular oval line, and the third, roughly semicircular, on the northern side. The fortress has been restored and laid out for visitors. It can be reached on foot along the paths of the hill or by the cable car that leaves from the park area at the foot of the hill.