Photowalk - Gornesti/Gernyeszeg - 05 Apr 2014

The Estate

The village of Gernyeszeg (Gornesti) is situated in the valley of the River Maros between Marosvásárhely (Targu-Mures)  and Régen (Reghin). The history of the village dates back 700 years and is closely connected to the life of its Landlords
The name of the village listed as ‘Knezeg’ appears in 1319 in documents for the first time as a donation made by the Hungarian King Károly Robert to his subject Szécsényi Simon.
Later Sigismund of Luxemburg (1387-1437) gave the property in 1405 to Somkereki Antal who saved his life in the lost battle at Nikapoli in 1396.One of his sons Antal built a fortress in the village first mentioned in 1477.
The fortress, mostly built of stone, had three towers and two smaller bastions. It was surrounded by a moat with a drawbridge over it. Its size was mostly similar to that of the baroque castle of today. The family died in 1642 with the widow living there until 1670.
The next owner was Bánffy Dénes , but after only 4 years he lost the property in favour of Teleki Mihály.

The Castle and the Park

You reach the castle over the former drawbridge across the ditch. The building in baroque style resembles to some extent other castles around Budapest like at Gödöllö, Pecel and Nagytétény.
It is the so called Grassalkowich style, its main features being the „U” form, a large dome in the middle and a festivity hall beaneth.
The walls and the ceiling of the festivity hall have been painted since the beginning of the XIX. century. Above the entrance door and the door leading to the loggia one can see the painted weapons of the family. But the three chandeliers of Murano glass are the most impressive remains of the former wealth. The park got its actual form at the begining of the XIX century.Valuable and rare trees were planted, like the gingo-biloba(right from the main entrance), lime, willow , oak-trees and cypresses. Part of the fomer ditch became  a lake with a small island in the middle.Once there were swans there too. The Margit spring cherishes the memory of Countess Géza Teleki born Countess Margit Bethlen.
There are grotesque sculptures around the lake representing some famous figures of the French revolution, like Mirabeau, Les dames des halles (market women) and Louis XVI.
There are some other sculptures in the park representig ancient gods and godesses: Ganymedes on the left, in front of the bridge, Bachus and Ceres to the left and right of the main entrance, Neptun , Pan , Venus in the park behind the castle. They were brought to Gernyeszeg in the early 20th from Budapest by Count Domokos Teleki.

Flowers II

Tulips were first grown in Western Europe in the middle of the sixteenth century. They were cultivated by Counsellor Herwart of Augsburg, a man famous for his collection of rare exotic plants. The bulbs were sent to Herwart by a friend from Istanbul in Turkey, where the tulip had already been popular for a long time. (The word “tulip” is believed to originate also from a Turkish word for turban.)
In 1559 tulips were seen in Herwart’s garden by Conrad Gesner who, in the following ten years, claims to have popularised them in Europe. Tulips became sought after by the wealthy, especially in Holland. Wealthy people in Amsterdam dispatched their men directly to Constantinople (now Istanbul) for bulbs, paying high prices for them. The tulip’s reputation then grew to such heights that, by 1634, wealthy people who did not have a tulip collection were judged to have bad taste. Many learned men, including Pompeius de Angelis
and the celebrated Lipsius of Leyden, the author of the treatise “De Constantia,” were passionately fond of tulips.
An overwhelming desire to own tulips gripped the middle classes. Merchants and shopkeepers, even those with modest incomes, began to vie with each other for tulips – and in the preposterous prices they paid for them. A trader from Harlaem paid half of his life savings for a single bulb. He didn’t buy for profit; he just wanted his friends to admire it.
The popularity of the tulip in Holland is inexplicable. The Dutch are generally prudent people, yet tulips are inferior to roses in both beauty and perfume. Even sweet-peas are prettier than tulips, while both sweet-peas and roses flower for longer than tulips.

Photowalk - 05-Nov-2013

Winter in the City