Malbork

Malbork stands on the Nogat beneath the immense brick castle of the Teutonic Order. Founded in the thirteenth century and dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Marienburg began as a fortified monastery. In 1309 the Grand Master moved his seat here from Venice, and successive enlargements made the complex the centre of the Order's Prussian state. Its High, Middle and Lower Castles, divided by moats and defended by walls and towers, housed both a religious community and the machinery of government. The Nogat provided a water route through the Vistula delta to the Baltic.

After the Polish–Lithuanian victory at Grunwald in 1410, the castle withstood a prolonged siege. Its fate changed during the Thirteen Years' War, when the Order pledged it to unpaid Bohemian soldiers. In 1457 they sold the fortress to King Casimir IV of Poland. Malbork became a royal residence, and Polish kings often stayed there on journeys to Gdańsk. The castle remained a seat of authority in Royal Prussia long after the grand masters moved away.

The First Partition of Poland in 1772 brought Malbork under Prussian rule. As the old fortress lost its earlier purpose, parts fell into decay; its great halls and courtyards nevertheless continued to testify to the ambitions of the Order that had built it and the rulers who inherited it.