Many amazing stories are told about the Pniew castle-fortification
Each “worthy” castle should have its own legends and ghosts. Pniew Castle is no exception, which is located on a low hill on the outskirts of the town of Nadvirna, if you go towards the village of Pniew.
The fortress on the hill seems to be quite large in area - probably one of the largest citadels in Ukraine.
After the final decline of the powerful Galicia-Volyn principality, namely after the tragic death in 1340 of the last Galician prince Boleslav-Yuri II, Galician land in the second half of the XIV century was finally captured by King Casimir.
Polish feudal lords tried to gain a foothold in the occupied lands with the help of numerous fortresses and castles. In the 16th century, the Pnevsky castle was built, which before the appearance of the Stanislav fortress was considered the strongest fortress in the Carpathian region. It was built by feudal lords of walnut origin, the Kuropatovs, who received these lands for military service from King Vladislav of Opolsky.
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The castle reached its final form in the 17th century. An overview of today's ruins indicates that the fortress was rebuilt several times. In the plan, the castle is an irregular pentagon with protruding corner defensive towers that come from different times. The outer walls of the castle are made of broken stone, bricks - one and a half meters thick. Access to the castle from the eastern side was hampered by a several-meter slope, from the western side - a rather deep ditch, on the other two sides there is a completely accessible plain. Natural conditions played a secondary role in the defenses of the fortress. The castle received its inaccessibility thanks to the creation of a well-thought-out system of artificial means of defense.
The fortress withstood many sieges, in particular the Turkish attack in 1676, when almost all the fortifications of Ivano-Frankivsk region were destroyed (except for the Stanislav fortress).
Not a lot of information about successful sieges or assaults has survived (in particular, in 1621, the rebels kind of dug into the castle and unexpectedly captured it). After the loss of defenses in the 18th century, the castle became something of an estate type, and gradually collapsed at the beginning of the 19th century. it is partially dismantled for the noble cause of building a brewery.
The castle is crumbling, and to this day - a few years ago, one of the most surviving towers collapsed. There are overhead communications - now it is not difficult to drive into the castle.
They say that ghosts live in Pniewski Castle. Many amazing stories are told about this fortification. One of the legends about ghost watchmen. Residents of Pnev say that several years ago, during excavations, the builders managed to see several strange "creatures". Workers have unearthed a room that is not on any of the stone construction plans. According to legend, the guards of the entrance tower carefully checked every visitor to the castle. And for persons of "dubious appearance" there was a separate room where martyr interrogations were performed. The typical end of such interrogations was an abyss: the floor was moved apart, and people were lowered onto sharp sticks. This is how some visits to the Pniew Castle ended. Therefore, they say that the guards are still tormented by their conscience for such inhuman acts and the number of innocent victims that they roam the castle ruins to this day.
Other rumors are spreading. One of the legends says that an underground passage led from the castle, which left somewhere in the territory of the present park in the town of Nadvirna, another that the underground passage connected the castle and the Manyavsky skete, which is very doubtful, because from Pneva to Manyava it is at least 30 kilometers. The fact that the castles had secret underground passages is confirmed by studies of such strongholds, as well as specific cases. For example, a few years ago in Nadvirna, a local market failed in one of these moves. However, no one knows how many such moves were. They are said to have been used during the siege to summon help and sometimes to rescue.
There are many stories that precious treasures can still be found in the castle, but not everyone believes the legends. Local residents tell one story: once a group of young guys was walking in the old ruins. It never occurred to the guys to look for any treasures there. They tell how, before their very eyes, two young men with a metal detector went inside. After a few seconds, the sounds of the device were heard. The tourists took the shovels in their hands and instantly dug up a lot of silver and bronze coins somewhere at a depth of a meter and a half. The observers were amazed.
