ILAVA / Illava / Illau castle was called Leva in the beginning and when it first emerged in history it was owned by the oligarch Máté Csák. It was granted a town charter of immunity by King Charles Robert I of Anjou (1308-1342) and was commanded by castellans (Lat. castellani = royal officers). Under Leopold I of Habsburg (1657-1705) it was a demesne of the Crown. The castle and its appurtenances were then purchased by Count Bräuner for 80,000 fls. He only used the lower castle as a residence and had the upper castle rebuilt as a friary. In 1692 he moved Trinitarian monks (Ordo Sanctissimae Trinitatis redemptionis captivorum) to the friary, which thus became the first house of the Order in Hungary. In 1855 the Viennese administration purchased the upper castle from the family and made it into a state-run prison. Ilava market town lies in the vicinity of the castle and had ca. 1000 Slovak inhabitants in the 1850s. Joseph Adalbert Krickel travelled through the Váh valley and remarks in his book that the beer brewed in Ilava was even better than the one that could have been drunk in Bavaria.

Bibliography: Fekete Nagy, Illava, Kerekes, Krickel, Lovcsányi, Mednyánszky 1844, Mednyánszky 1981, Pázmány, Rupp