Câlnic Citadel

The Câlnic Citadel (Romanian: Cetatea Câlnic; German: Burg Kelling) is a citadel located in Câlnic, Alba County, in the Transylvania region of Romania. It was built by a nobleman whose family later sold it to the local ethnic German Transylvanian Saxon community at a time when the area belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary. When still used for defensive purposes, the double walls encompassed a residential keep, storerooms and a Roman Catholic chapel that became Lutheran following the Reformation. Together with the surrounding village, the citadel forms part of the villages with fortified churches in Transylvania UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Mongol invasion of 1241 prompted a surge in military construction in Transylvania, with wood and earthen defenses abandoned in favor of stone, assembled in haste and without much initial attention to artistic detail. At Câlnic, the citadel began as a residence for a Graf (count), one of the last such to be built in Transylvania. Around 1270, the nobleman Chyl de Kelling, whose family gave the village its German name, built a keep for his residence. The strong parallelepiped structure, with a ground floor and three floors for living space, came to be known as the Siegfried tower. Frequent Ottoman attacks led the keep to be fortified with a defensive level and surrounded by a massive wall. The oval precinct around the keep was fitted with a guard tower to the south and a gate tower to the north. The structure was surrounded by a water-filled moat, with access only by drawbridge. The noble owners never went along very well with the local notables, and in 1430, the final Graf sold the citadel to the villagers and moved away.

...
Wikipedia