In 1457, during the Thirteen Years' War, the castle was sold by Bohemian mercenaries to King Casimir IV of Poland in lieu of indemnities.

Malbork Castle is also one of Poland's official national Historic Monuments (Pomnik historii), as designated on 8 September 1994.

Its main purpose was to strengthen their own control of the area following the Order's 1274 suppression of the Great Prussian Uprising of the Baltic tribes.

No contemporary documents survive relating to its construction, so instead the castle's phases have been worked out through the study of architecture and the Order's administrative records and later histories.

When this last stronghold of the Crusades fell to Muslim Arabs, the Order moved its headquarters to Venice before arriving in Prussia.

Malbork became more important in the aftermath of the Teutonic Knights' conquest of Gdańsk (Danzig) and Eastern Pomerania in 1308.

The Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Siegfried von Feuchtwangen, who arrived in Marienburg from Venice, undertook the next phase of the fortress' construction.

[6] In 1309, in the wake of the papal persecution of the Knights Templar and the Teutonic takeover of Danzig, Feuchtwangen relocated his headquarters to the Prussian part of the Order's monastic state.

[9] The favourable position of the castle on the river Nogat allowed easy access by barges and trading ships arriving from the Vistula and the Baltic Sea.

In the summer of 1410, the castle was besieged following the Order's defeat by the armies of Władysław II Jagiełło and Vytautas the Great (Witold) at the Battle of Grunwald.

[15] The mayor of the town around the castle, Bartholomäus Blume, resisted the Polish forces for three more years, but the Poles captured and sentenced him to death in 1460.

Since 1457 it served as one of the several Polish royal residences, fulfilling this function for over 300 years until the First Partition of Poland in 1772.

[11] By the decision of King John II Casimir Vasa of 1652, Jesuits took care of the castle chapels of Mary and St. Anne.

In 1794 David Gilly, a Prussian architect and head of the Royal Office of Works, made a structural survey of the castle, to recommend on its future use or demolition.

These were published by Friedrich Frick between 1799 and 1803 and led the Prussian public to "rediscover" the castle and the history of the Teutonic Knights.

[20] Johann Dominicus Fiorillo published another edition of the engravings on 12 February 1803, also wanting to encourage public interest.

[26] In memory of the town's residents voting in favor of remaining part of Germany, after the First World War, a monument of a knight on a tall column was erected in front of the castle.