Kanizsa

Kanizsa grew around a castle in the marshy country of southwestern Hungary. The fortress was recorded in 1323, and the settlement became a market town held for generations by the Kanizsai family. By the fifteenth century it had a bath, a hospital and a Franciscan house.

As Ottoman raids threatened the frontier, its defenses were strengthened with earth and timber and protected by artificially flooded marshes. After the fall of Szigetvár in 1566, Kanizsa became the seat of a frontier command between Lake Balaton and the Drava. The Ottomans captured the castle in 1600 and made it the center of a province; an imperial siege failed to retake it the following year. The traveler Evliya Çelebi described a busy town with baths, a mosque and many shops.

Habsburg forces took Kanizsa in 1690, and the castle was later demolished. In the eighteenth century fields, vineyards, craft guilds and fairs supported a growing town, whose merchants included people of Jewish and Greek origin.