From 1267 it was a royal castle, but in 1420 Sigismund pawned it. King Matthias, however, repurchased it and granted it to John Corvinus together with a garrison in his own pay.
Known as the "Gateway to Hungary" (Porta Hungariae), the castle once protected the routes of the Amber Road and a major pilgrimage route to the Holy Land.
The stone castle of Fülek in Hungarian and in Slovakian: Fiľakovský hrad was built on the rim of the crater of an extinct volcano, probably from the 13th century onwards, on the site of an earlier wooden fortification
Dendrochronological examination of the wooden material from the ramparts of Bratislava Castle suggests that the trees used for the beams were felled in the 10th century.
