The Castles

It didn’t even help the people of Grižane that Martin Frankopan known as the “Pious”, the founder of the harbour of Crikvenica governed them once in 1449. He confirmed his religious inclination assigning the castle to the Trsat Franciscan monastery. Moreover, nature also dealt the people of Grižane a blow – in 1323 when Vinodol was shaken by an earthquake, the castle was damaged. Later in its place a landslide opened up, so it could be said that it, despite the pledge, even God had forsaken it.

Even history was relentless, and the path to its disappearance was quick: Chroniclers recorded that in the 16th century the fortress belonged to Bernardin Frankopan, and from the mid-17th to the Zrinski family. The end then came with the list of confiscated property from 1671. All previous privileges that the people of Grižane had were abolished and it was abandoned, most probably, at the end of the 18th century. The castle was in the shape of an irregular square with round towers in the corners. The irregularity of the building was caused by the specific terrain, because it was located on porous soil, built along a rocky cliff known in Croatian as “griže” meaning “living rock” from which the town took its name.