Slanec (Nagyszalánc) land of the muses

Nagyszalánc (Slanec) is on the northern side of the Great Milic 23 km southeast from Košice. The village‘s main attraction is the castle ruins of the former Szalánc (Slanec) fortress was built on the adjacent Castle Hill, which still dominates the rural landscape. These castle ruins are still standing on the hill north of the village. A hiking trail leads to the ruins starting fom the settlement. Szalánc (Slanec) settlement was formed around an important fortress, which was represented in 1230 included the first record in the “Castrum Salis‘ or “Salt castle” denotation. The castle had built by an ancestor of the Szalánci family, Csama’s son Péter from the Aba genus. Functioned as an important fortress of the region and protected the Abaúj-Zemplén gateway. Many battle raged for the possession of the castle, and it changed hands several times as well. It was in the Reinhold, the Szalánczi, and later the family’s Losonczy hands. A memorable family member Losonczy Anna (1553-1595) who was the wife baron Ungnád Kristóf palatine of Croatia, when Bálint Balassi outstanding poet of the Hungarian Renaissance knew her. The poet was besieged her in vain with love, and did not even get her hand when she was widowed while still young. She married Zsigmond Forgách in 1589. The songs of flowers and secular love poems have powerful effect in the Balassi’s Julia poems, inspired by Anna Losonzcy. The poems treat a wide scale of emotions from the exultant joy of a happy meeting to the resignation of complete hopelessness.