Ozalj - a preserved pearl in the lowland of Francopan properties

They say that Ozalj is the only medieval castle in the whole world under which trains pass daily through the railway tunnel. Perhaps, in the distant future, someone will decide to turn this fact into a tourist attraction and expand the tunnel into a "subway" station, from which visitors would take the elevator or, even better, the stone stairs to take a tour.

But joking aside (although one day it might not be a joke), the tour of Ozalj begins with a crossing over the wooden bridge, and that is the only thing that is historically correct. An entrance through the city walls would not be appropriate, because history does not remember an invader for whom the city's defensive mantle did not remain an insurmountable obstacle. Descending from the walls by free fall might be more appropriate - however, as I hear "from verified sources", the possibility of installing a zip-line for a quick descent from the castle to the swimming pool is being discussed. Why not? I'm fine with that idea.

The current appearance of the Old Town of Ozalj is not from the time when Prince Nikola IV included it in his possessions. Krčki, the first of the name Frakopan. At that time, at the end of the 14th century, he was still only titled as the prince of Krčki, sometimes also as the prince of Senj and Modruška, and with other titles, depending on the occasion. To tell the truth, at that time Ozalj received as a guarantee for the borrowed money, it was not excluded from the chest of his mother, Princess Ana Gorička, but a little later he bought it completely.

For about 150 years, the castle belonged to the Frankopans, and it was only in the fifth generation that it passed to the Zrinskis. Let's put it this way, because the Zrinskis could be considered half Frankopan. Namely, the first of the surname Zrinski was Juraj, son of Prince Pavle Šubić Bribirski and Princess Elizabeta Krčka, daughter of Prince Fridrik III. Prince Nikola IV. in 1430, he received a charter from Pope Martin V recognizing his kinship with the Roman patrician family Frangepani, and was given a new family coat of arms with two lions breaking bread. Since that time, the Krk princes have been using the family name Frankopan, and if you don't mind, you will still find them in the literature as Frankapane, Frangepane and some other similar names. Do not push the poppy to the thread of what is right and what is wrong. In my lifetime alone, the spelling changed five times, and then it didn't even exist, so writing, especially names, and how it depended on the scribe, his skill, hearing and inclination to a certain cultural environment, which at least in our country were in abundance ( besides Croatian in several variants, there were also Italian, Hungarian, German...).

After the death of Prince Nikola IV. Frankopan's property was managed for some time in the role of elder by the eldest son Ivan VI. Ange, but he also died quickly, and the younger brothers did not really have a sense of community, so they clashed, even armed, which ultimately led in 1449 to the division of one large Francophone principality into eight smaller ones and thus ended the historical rise princely families. As the most important property in that division, Ozalj went to the next oldest brother, Nikola V., who managed it for only seven years until his death in 1456, and after that, because he had no children, the property was taken over by Prince Stjepan III. who mostly stayed in his Modruš. It was only his son, the famous Prince Bernardin, and only in his older days, after Modruš was ravaged by the Turks, that he began dining in Ozalj and was titled as the Prince of Ozalj.

After Prince Bernardin, the Ozal property was taken over by his son Ferdinand, who completed the construction of the monastery and church at Svetica and, according to some sources, was the first Frankopan buried in the monastery crypt. His wife, Princess Marija, daughter of the Serbian despot Jovan Branković, is probably also buried in the same place. What we have material evidence for is that the next lord of Ozalj, Ferdinand's son Prince Stjepan IV. buried in Svetice, and with him probably also his wife Princess Katarina von Egkh und Hungersbach and their young daughter also Katarina.

At that time, Ozalj became the property of Prince Nikola Šubić Zrinski, the famous defender of Siget, as a dowry of Stjepan's sister Princess Katarina, and from that time, i.e. in 1556, there is a carved inscription on the "Zitnica" building NICO • COM • ZR (Nikola knez Zrinski) , which the friendly curators of the museum humorously interpret as the oldest .com domain in history - created over 400 years before the Internet.

A little less than a hundred years later, Ozalj once again got a mistress from the Frankopan family. Namely, the young princess Ana Katarina, daughter of Karlovac general Vuk II. Krste Frankopan, married Prince Petar Zrinski, and the wedding ceremony was held in Ozalj in October 1641. About thirty years later, both famous Croatian princely families left the historical stage, and Ozalj often changed owners.

The current owner of the Old Town of Ozlja is the "Society of Brothers of the Croatian Dragon", which stopped the devastation and started the reconstruction. The City Museum is still active in the area of the castle, there used to be a cinema (the projection hall still has the old look), and the tower of the south wing is the area of the Dragon Table Karlovac intended for the library, where the head Mladen Kuka Zmaj Abyssin II welcomed me. Of course, for that meeting, we treated ourselves in an appropriate way - with Frankopan beer.