Pieninský hrad - Zamkowa Góra

Castle Mountain - a mountain at the end of the northeast ridge of the Three Crowns Massif in the Pieniny Proper.

From three sides it has steep and difficult accessible slopes, only in southern direction it is connected by narrow ridge through Zamkowa Przełęcz with Ostry Wierch. Szczęsny Morawski in XIX century wrote about it: "In the middle of the Pieniny Mountains, a few hundred fathoms from the Dunajec River, on its left coast, rises a mountain in the form of a wedge: obliquely but very steeply sloping on one side, perpendicular on the other. Its northern slopes fall steeply to the valley of Pienski Potok that separates it from Pieninek. In their lower part there is Pieniny Cave. Above it, on the ridge with a height of about 100 m paradise for botanists - so-called Kinga's Gardens. These are lush patches of rock vegetation, among which there are many limestone plants: Arduino mard, Zawadzki chrysanthemum, alpine aster, carnation. Among the rare ones it is worth mentioning the yellowish corydalis and the Mueller's helleborine.

A tourist path leads along the western slopes from a deep ravine of the Hulinský Brook. In its final part there are long steps with handrails. The steps lead to the ruins of the Pieniny Castle under the northern top of the Castle Hill. Apart from the ruins of the castle there is also St. Kinga's cave with her statue, erected here to commemorate her stay in Pieniny.

From the southern side, the Castle Mountain is undercut by a steep 50-meter high wall. The very top of the mountain is currently inaccessible for tourists. There used to be a path leading to the top from the ruins of the castle, made before the World War I by a hermit, who established here a hermitage called Pieniny Hermitage. Kazimierz Sosnowski wrote in 1930: "There are benches to rest on, and all around is the Pieniny landscape of unspeakable charm. This place is so beautiful that it is difficult to tear oneself away from it; from below one can hear the murmur of the Dunajec river, whose modest whiteness is revealed in three points". Nowadays the views from the castle hill are very limited as it is completely overgrown with forest, only from the castle ruins one can see the peaks of Pieninek. It is a mature forest with a predominance of beech. It grew on the site of a pine forest that burned down in 1915 in a two-week fire.