Castles and Kirks of the Pravdinsk District

Description

A one-day drive across the Pravdinsk and Chernyakhovsk districts: five sites from the "salt" bishop's castle to the estate ruins on a castle hill. About ninety kilometers of roads; access to some points is via secondary local roads, and the best months are from May to October when the approach tracks are dry. Start is the settlement of Kamenskoye, former Zaalau: overgrown ruins of the Samland bishop's castle, founded between 1352 and 1355 on the site of a burned Prussian fortress. The name is connected with salt production — saltworks operated here, and in summer 1376 the castle was captured and burned by Keistut; later it was restored, and in the sixteenth century a brewery was added to the walls. Today this is a protected ruin with a caveat: the walls are crumbling, and around is private property, access should be clarified in advance. Further south, the route goes to the vicinity of Pravdinsk. In the settlement of Porechye stand the ruins of the Allenau kirch, founded in the fifteenth century — the tradition links the foundation to the grand masters of the Order from the Jungingen family; there is no roof, but the wall volume, high tower and eastern pediment hold the silhouette. Further still — Progress, former Auglitten, where the walls of the church remain from around 1450, one of the most destroyed temples of the region. Between them, on the castle hill in Kurortny, are the ruins of Gross Vonsdorf: the Order castle of 1356–1372 on the site of the Prussian fortress Kapostete, dismantled after the 1830 fire; from it, the gate tower of 1356, wall fragments and the hochburg platform remain. The finale is Zheleznodorozhny, former Gerdauen: above the settlement on the hill are the ruins of the 1315 castle, consecrated in 1325, which withstood a Lithuanian campaign in the fourteenth century. Since the seventeenth century the castle has not lived as a residence: on its place grew the estate of Baron von Romberg, and today over the medieval cellars fragments of a Neo-Gothic wing, stables and a well are read. There is one rule for all points — do not go under crumbling structures: this ring has neither roofs nor fences, and that is its honesty.