Nitra Castle dominates the Old Town of Nitra, Slovakia, and is a national cultural monument. The castle was built in the eleventh century on the site of an earlier fort. The first fortified center on Castle Hill dates to the Bronze Age, and Celts settled the hill in the first century BCE. Slavs later occupied it, and in the second half of the ninth century they built a rampart with outer drystone walls each 10 feet (3 meters) thick.
St. Emmeram's Cathedral and the bishop's residence form the core. St. Emmeram's Church is Romanesque from the eleventh century, the Upper Church is Gothic from the fourteenth, and the Lower Church dates from the seventeenth. The Bishop's Palace was originally Gothic and gained its Late Baroque look in the eighteenth century.
Most surviving fortifications date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It remains the seat of the Diocese of Nitra.
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