Malbork Castle

Winter darkness still shrouded the streets as we trudged through the centre of Gdansk to the railway station, with a quick stop at a well-lit bakery for coffee and sandwiches to go.

An hour on the train passed in a sleep-deprived blur of green fields and grassy embankments that opened into castle views right before we pulled into the station.

The red brick bulk of Malbork caste looms by the banks of the river Nogat like a fortified monastery. When its chapels weren’t echoing with prayer its massive halls resounded with feasts as the holy knights took a break from monopolizing the amber trade to joust one another for tournament glory.

It was built in the 13th century by Teutonic Knights who made it their power base in the region. The structure quickly spread to cover some 52 acres with walls, fortifications and outlying houses, making it Europe’s largest castle by land area.

You might be wondering what a crusader castle is doing so far from the Mediterranean and the Levant, but they are surprisingly common here.

The eastern Baltic Sea periphery is scattered with nearly 100 crusader castles, stone testaments to a post-Viking era of “trade” in beliefs, when powerful forces pushed up from the south and the core of Europe expanded.

Pope Alexander III set the Northern Crusades in motion with a papal bull in 1171. He wanted to stamp out pagans like Gediminas, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, who refused to embrace the new faith as his subjects carved out a peaceful feudal existence in eastern Baltic forests.

Heavily armed religious orders hacked and burned their way across Europe’s northern periphery, spreading the Gospel and seizing land in the name of the faith, prefaced with a choice of baptism or the sword. 

As the Teutonic Knights tightened their hold, they built a powerful fortress at Memel (today the Lithuanian city of Klaipėda) and founded Königsberg as their residency. 

Town planning spread alongside Christianity when the knights expanded their brick and stone castles into orderly settlements, flooding the lands of peasant farmers with Christian immigrants and subjugating the Balts and Old Prussians as they seized territory.

By 1226, they had founded the sovereign State of the Teutonic Order, controlling much of what would later become Prussia, spreading German culture to the Baltic Sea’s easternmost fringes. Where once the natural world had been sacred, now it was The Word and the law.

The knights exterminated most of the native Prussian population and became the dominant power in the region, which they developed by building castles, importing German peasants to settle depopulated areas, and monopolizing the lucrative grain trade (despite their knightly vows of poverty).

Malbork Castle was successfully defended against many attempted sieges in the 14th century but the power of the Knights was finally broken at the Battle of Grunwald (15 July 1410) —  medieval Europe’s largest battle — a fight in which most of their leaders were slaughtered or taken prisoner. They retreated to their stronghold of Malbork and were never again serious contenders. But their period of conquest and control changed the Baltic region irrevocably. 

Malbork changed hands several times after the heyday of the Teutonic Knights. It was a Polish royal residence from 1466 to 1772, and then incorporated into Prussia. 

It fell into disrepair, was partly restored, and then badly damaged by Second World War bombing and shelling. The structure we see today was restored beginning in 1961 using detailed documentation prepared by earlier conservators. 

Two rings of defensive walls surround three fortified castles, plus assorted houses and granaries. We spent the entire day exploring its labyrinth of halls, turrets, rooms and stairways, covering more cobblestone than my poor boots care to remember.

And then a late day train back to Gdansk — the only tardy train we encountered in Poland — and a delicious feed of pierogi and beer at Mandu near the main railway station.