The medieval castle Ceklis

The remains of Čeklís Castle are among the relatively little-known medieval fortifications in south-western Slovakia. The castle ruins are located on the western outskirts of the municipality of Bernolákovo, district of Senec, between the originally Romanesque church of St. Stephen the King and the reconstructed Baroque chateau, which was built between 1714 and 1722 by the provincial judge and Croatian ban Joseph Eszterházy. Until recently, the only indication of its existence was an artificial hill with the Hungarian name Várdomb (Castle Hill), on top of which there is a round, brick-walled water tower from the beginning of the 20th century. Apart from the name, only the remains of stone walls on its western slope with a low arched opening, which was usually considered to be the entrance to the former fortifications, indicated an older origin of the hill. The castle was originally built on an important, but not very defensive place, on the edge of a wavy terrace of the Trnava Loess Plateau, which towers about 29 m above the nearby Danube plain with the Čierna voda river (Black water river). The natural terrace thus protects the fortification only from the south-western side. In the past, the castle must have been protected by ditches around its perimeter, of which only the one that separates it from the area of ​​the nearby church is clearly visible today.
 
In the archival sources known today, the Čeklís castle first appears in 1323. The first direct mention concerns the local castellan Abraham Rufus, who bought the castle from King Karl Robert in a forced exchange for a more significant and strategically important manorial estate in Šintava. In 1392 it became the property of King Siegmund of Luxembourg. Later it belonged to the Counts (Earls) of Rozhanovce (noble family Rozgony) and Counts (Earls) of Svätý Jur and Pezinok, but mutual disagreements between the owners and armed actions caused that Čeklís castle in 1511 was only mentioned in written sources as a ruin (dirutum castrum) and in the 1523 as demolished (castrum nostram dirutum Cheklez) is mentioned.
 
Since 2010, the civic association called Čeklís Castle (Hrad Čeklís), in close cooperation with the Slovak National Museum-Archaeological Museum in Bratislava and the District Monuments Office, with the financial support of the Slovak Ministry of Culture and several other sponsors and supporters, has been trying to uncover the history of the castle. In the course of ten seasons of excavations, almost a quarter of the assumed area of ​​the castle was uncovered, especially the northern part in the direction of today's castle. The excavation work to date has provided interesting insights into the structural development of the medieval fortifications and the prehistoric settlement of Bernolákovo.