Castle Museum

Szeged's Castle Museum stands on the site of a medieval royal fortress built between 1261 and 1280 above the Tisza River, at a crossing point that had served as a trading post since Roman times, when the settlement appeared as "Partiszkón" in Ptolemy's second-century geography. The castle gained added regional importance after the Mongol invasion destroyed nearby Csongrád Castle, and for centuries it controlled river traffic and the salt trade from Transylvania. Ottoman forces seized it in 1542; a Hungarian force briefly recaptured it in 1552, but the Ottomans held the fortress for roughly a century and a half until imperial troops retook it in 1688. It later served as a prison, notably holding the outlaw Sándor Rózsa, before the catastrophic Tisza flood of 1879 fatally weakened the structure, leading the city to demolish it between 1881 and 1883 and reuse its brick to rebuild the flooded downtown. Only the Mária Terézia Gate and fragments of a water bastion survive. Today the Castle Museum, run by the Móra Ferenc Museum, occupies the former castle garden and presents the site's history under the name Castrum Partiscum.