This is the Pomeranian Dukes’ Castle, and this is where the Griffins lived. The story of this hilltop site begins in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the first ducal residence stood here overlooking the Oder River. At that time, it was little more than an earthen stronghold. The castle we see today began to take shape when Duke Barnim the Third ordered the construction of a permanent stone residence. Over the following decades, the complex expanded into the political center of the Duchy of Pomerania. One of the most important rulers associated with this castle was Duke Bogislaw the tenth, often known as Bogislaw the Great. Around the turn of the fifteenth century, he continued the castle's development and helped strengthen the duchy during a period of prosperity. But dynasties don't last forever, and the end of the Griffins in the early seventeenth century is tied to the darkest story in this castle, and to a woman named Sidonia von Borcke. She was born into Pomeranian nobility about five hundred years ago and by all accounts was considered one of the most beautiful women at the Griffin court. According to legend, she and the young Prince Ernst Ludwig fell deeply in love. But the prince, as princes tend to do, married for political advantage instead, wedding Sophie Hedwig of Brunswick. Sidonia, furious and humiliated, is said to have uttered a curse: ""It will not be fifty years, and the Griffin family will perish."" That's the legend. The reality was slower and crueller. Sidonia never married. She lived for decades in increasing isolation, dependent on the charity of the court she had once graced. As she aged, several Griffin dukes died in quick succession, some without heirs. The public, already anxious about the dynasty's future, began looking for someone to blame. Suspicion fell on the old, unmarried noblewoman who had once cursed the family in a moment of heartbreak. Then Sidonia was formally tried for witchcraft. Witnesses were called, accusations were stacked, and the elderly woman who had once been the beauty of the court was subjected to the full machinery of early modern witch prosecution. She was found guilty, beheaded outside the Mill Gate, and her body was burned. The trial records fill over a thousand pages, archived to this day in Greifswald. Seventeen years later, the last Griffin duke died without an heir, and the dynasty that had ruled Pomerania for centuries was extinct. The timing was devastating. Sidonia had said fifty years, and the end came within that window. The curse, whether you believe in such things or not, appeared to have come true. There is a Witches' Cell exhibition that brings the story to life through holographic projections and replica torture instruments from the period. It's genuinely unsettling. You can explore this and the castle if you wish to, but you’ll have to pay an entry fee. Now, follow the map to the last surviving tower of Szczecin's medieval fortifications.