El Houska Castle, in the Czech RepublicIt is a fortress without walls or moats. He never needed them to keep invaders and bandits away. It was enough for him to have a legend (or perhaps reality?) That it was built on a bottomless pit that leads to the underworld: the Door to hell.
That is the myth. The reality is that the castle was built in the XNUMXth century by order of King Ottokar III of Bohemia in the late Gothic style. Those details really matter very little to tourists who come to Castle Houska, which reach this corner of the country surrounded by mountains and forests, about 40 kilometers north of Prague. All of them rest restlessly get out of their cars and buses with the hope and fear of being able to peer into that black and unfathomable mouth that leads to Hell.
Dreadful signs on the door give an account of the fantastic creatures, half human half animal, that have risen from the depths of the well throughout history. Other legend It tells that once the king decided to spare the life of a group of condemned to death in exchange for them to descend through the well with a rope and tell what they saw there. The first of the damned could only hold out for a few seconds in the dark. When he was taken from there he had aged 30 years.
This is how this castle spends them, which, if not supernatural, is at least strange. It was built without access to drinking water, without a kitchen, and away from any road and commercial route. Enigmas that reinforce its aura of a cursed place.