I find the word "castle" can be a little vague, like with Neuschwanstein Castle, which is really more of a palace. I don't think it's worth battling too much about what is or isn't a castle. I don't think you could come up with one set of castles in the world that satisfies everybody.
Same for France and Spain, which is what I am familiar with. I am expecting it to be true all around.
The map of France shows maybe 100 castles? If you include castles, forts and chateaux (which it seems the map aims to do) France has around 45000 of them, including 15k medieval castles (military), an other 15k from the Renaissance period (mix of military and luxury), and 20k more recent ones (some military, many luxury type).
I know if at least 20 medieval castles within 1h of my hometown and not a single one is here.
For Spain maybe 10k to 20k castles and forts. Out of which at least 2500 genuine medieval castles (not just big houses with fortifications)
Seems like your map lists pre-historic ring forts, not castles?
I'm not sure what the 'official' definition of a castle is, but I personally wouldn't consider a crannóg or something like Dún Aonghasa a castle. Nor would I consider a stand alone tower house a castle, although they might (along with gate lodges and great houses), sometimes be colloquially referred to as castles.
I like the definition where castle is a fortress where a Nobel lives. Fort is where an army lives but no Nobel leader. Palace is where a Nobel lives but it isn't expected to withstand a siege
*Noble. Alfred Nobel invented stable explosives and started a Norwegian prize for achievement in science. Nobles, however, were high ranked members of the feudal hierarchy, often passing their position on to their children.
Yes. All the prizes except the peace prize are awarded in Sweden. Norway was in a union with Sweden at the time the prizes were set up, but it's not definitely known why he chose the Norwegian parliament (via the Norwegian Nobel Committee) to aware the peace prize.
In the intro paragraph of the linked Wikipedia page: “Use of the term has varied over time and, sometimes, has also been applied to structures such as hill forts”.
Same for Scotland - there are 3 castles within 2 km of where I live, not including a couple of really old ruined hill-forts... which I don't think is an unusual density of these things for this part of the world.
Edit: And of course there is also the huge castle 13km away across the sea sitting on its volcanic plug and very visible from here.
For England as well, assuming a conservative definition like: Norman or later, mortared stone construction with remaining walls at least 4m high, not something like a fortified farm house for a single family. If you include Iron Age hill forts, the number becomes absurd.
Cool idea, horrible dataset. Its limited to things in Wikidata rather than using OSM, and it must have an article on Wikipedia in English to count so I am sure it is missing just based on that. And somehow it misses many castles (and other categories it includes) which do meet those requirements.
There is no definition of what they use to categorize anything either. And it clearly isn't applied consistently. There is a Château category and yet many things with Château in their name are tagged as castles.
It's not very comprehensive at all, the regions I know well in France are missing almost all of the actual castles. The site lists 180ish castles in France, when it's estimated there are 45,000 castles + chateaus in reality. Of course this depends on your exact definition of castle.
I wonder if it's only scraping english language Wikipedia articles?
But to be fair they’re much less well known, and quite well concealed, and are partly on private land, with big fences, cameras and scary warning signs. Tourists don’t seem to be much interested in post-medieval fortifications.
It's probably somewhat regional, as the ones in Canada seem to have pretty good tourism interest, especially when they're right inside a city like Quebec and Halifax.
But we're also very starved for true "Medieval Castles" like Europe or east Asia, so we take what we can get!
The Rova of Antananarivo /ˈruːvə/ (Malagasy: Rovan'i Manjakamiadana [ˈruvᵊn manˌdzakəmiˈadə̥nᵊ]) is a royal palace complex (rova) in Madagascar that was the home of the sovereigns of the Kingdom of Imerina in the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as of the rulers of the Kingdom of Madagascar in the 19th century. Located in the central highland city of Antananarivo, the Rova occupies the highest point on Analamanga, formerly the highest of Antananarivo's many hills.
Nice project, but what is "hidden" gem about Elmina castle in Ghana?
If Cape Coast Castle is described as "world renowned", then Elmina should be as well. I live in Ghana their popularity is almost evenly matched.
Also Elmina castle is the oldest and largest European building in existence in sub-Saharan Africa.
One more thing, it is kind of hard to click on specific dots when they are so clustered together. I had to zoom in a lot to see and be able to click on some of the castles I knew were there.
> Neither part of the monument's name is correct. ... was not a "castle" in the traditional sense, but instead may have functioned more like a "prehistoric high rise apartment complex".[8]
My understanding was always that aside from vanity castles like Craigdarroch (https://thecastle.ca) there aren't castles in North America because they're only practical in a pre-cannon world
I'm moderately disappointed that Fort Point in San Francisco isn't listed.
Things like Fort Dearborn in Chicago are listed, but all that remains is markers of the perimeter... while Fort Point is a structure that you can visit and walk around.
What's really neat about this isn't just the visualization, but that they’ve packaged the whole dataset as open GeoJSON/CSV mirrored on Hugging Face and GitHub—plus an MCP endpoint for AI agents.
The local "castle" on the map is Fort Duquesne, which is listed as "ruins" but in fact has no ruins to visit. It says "The site of both forts is now occupied by Point State Park, where the outlines of the two forts have been laid in granite slabs" - which is true, but...there are no ruins here!
If forts count as castles, at least do Fort Pitt, which has the blockhouse functional.
Anyways - this is a fun project and it should continue!
Same reaction! I just drove by it... taking a careful note after seeing it in the article. It does appear a bit keep-like, but that's a stretch. Maybe if the surrounding roads were replaced with walls/battlements/ramparts and such?
New Zealand was colonised long after castles had become obsolete. There are a few remains of WWII coastal fortifications here and there, but they’re now obsolete too.
The Māori built thousands of hilltop fortifications with wooden palisades (Pā), but lacking metal tools they didn’t build with stone.
See, I'd class those as something like 'follies' or Whimsy, as they don't appear to be actual fortifications, rather forms of affectation.
That said, I'm not sure what definition or list this site uses - as others have already pointed out, there are loads of castle missing I can tell, just from a few that I've visited across Italy.
Needs some of the ones referenced here (including the Dupont Castle, the work of the site's author, who lasted provided a work update in '22): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27929729
Is Fort Ross really "Renowned" as listed? I've never heard of it and honestly it doesn't look very interesting. I'd rather visit Fort Knox which is a real fortification currently in use, world famous, and not listed here.
Castle Sween was built in the 11th century (and might still not be the oldest).
Dalhousie Castle was built in 1247 and the oldest bit of the surviving castle is from the 15th century. Most of it is from the 17th century. The roof is post-2004.
The actual lesson is, if you want to leave a legacy, hope someone rebuilds it when it falls apart after you're gone.
US is clearly underrepresented, if forts counts as castles, as it seams to do, why isn’t Fort Knox there? Probably the most defended fort in the country.
So I could name recognise the top ten, and yeah I won’t argue too hard with the list, just apart from Neuschwanstein
- but the second I saw it I realised I did not know the name but “Bavarian fairy castle” clearly deserves its ranking
During the height of the Triangle Trade, Europeans built a lot of forts to protect their interests along the Gold and Ivory Coasts; why these forts are considered castles by this site is beyond me (just for clarification: a castle is a fortified private residence).
Edit: I now realise that the site specifically says "Map of the world's great castles & fortresses", so I guess the site considers them fortresses, not castles. I retract my snark.
Might need additional datasets though -- this one is lacking. only ~10 fortresses in France? LOL
The fortress / castle distinction is quite difficult and perhaps not useful? This map classifies the Crac (Krak) des Chevaliers[0], in modern-day Syria, as a "castle" but I would argue it's really a "fortress" (and in fact, one of the best preserved ancient fortresses in the world).
Tangential, but many of these aren't what people traditionally would think of as castles. Is there any consensus on what the "castliest of castles" is? Presumably something in the UK or Ireland or thereabouts considering that's where the popular media conception of them comes from.
I mean, the reason why these dominate in Europe is because
largely of the medieval era and a bit before that. Once
gunpowder became more widely used, castles became increasingly
obsolete. Nowadays they have only touristic value really or
movie values, such as the castle in the movie Monty Python
and the holy grail. Other than that they are just stone ruins
really, some more polished than others. They have no real
worth nowadays other than wonder how many resources went into
building them.
Also, as others pointed out, the map is missing many castles. I also doubt the spread over China, the map only says about 7 castles in whole China? So that seems totally wrong. The definition for a castle must be incorrect, because Japan has attributed many more and that is simply objectively incorrect. Is the chinese palace classified as a castle? If not, why not? If yes then why not other palaces in China? The map is really not very good here. It should begin by a good definition of what is meant with a castle.
"the 2,435 most significant landmarks worldwide, ordered by a fame ranking that blends Wikipedia coverage with real readership."
or someone fix the title here please to what on the app right now:
"Map of the world's great castles & fortresses" whatever that means.
Germany's Saxony alone has 700+ fortications with about 100 being touristically interesting. In the map I count like 9.
The map of France shows maybe 100 castles? If you include castles, forts and chateaux (which it seems the map aims to do) France has around 45000 of them, including 15k medieval castles (military), an other 15k from the Renaissance period (mix of military and luxury), and 20k more recent ones (some military, many luxury type).
I know if at least 20 medieval castles within 1h of my hometown and not a single one is here.
For Spain maybe 10k to 20k castles and forts. Out of which at least 2500 genuine medieval castles (not just big houses with fortifications)
I'm not sure what the 'official' definition of a castle is, but I personally wouldn't consider a crannóg or something like Dún Aonghasa a castle. Nor would I consider a stand alone tower house a castle, although they might (along with gate lodges and great houses), sometimes be colloquially referred to as castles.
Surely a castle is a fortified building, specific to the middle ages. Wikipedia agrees - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle
Which would put the number of Anglo-Norman castles in Ireland much lower, probably something around 100.
It's a nice idea, but the range seems extremely broad on the one hand but very incomplete on the other hand.
Edit: And of course there is also the huge castle 13km away across the sea sitting on its volcanic plug and very visible from here.
There is no definition of what they use to categorize anything either. And it clearly isn't applied consistently. There is a Château category and yet many things with Château in their name are tagged as castles.
There's a MASSIVE amount of castles missing
Just for France, the castle visible on the map -> this is not even 5%
Depending on the count it goes from 20000 castles to 45000 (just for France!)
Side question: why does Claude prefer dark backgrounds with low-contrast text?
Apparently Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, etc... were not really into castles, while Japan was?
I wonder if it's only scraping english language Wikipedia articles?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citadel_Hill_(Fort_George)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Island_(Nova_Scotia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citadelle_of_Quebec
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Fort_Erie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Anne
They built these things _everywhere_, probably a good part of what bankrupted the British Empire!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Charlotte_(Nassau)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Wales_Fort
Bran Castle: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q390275
Citadel Hill: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q321867
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_Western_Heights
But to be fair they’re much less well known, and quite well concealed, and are partly on private land, with big fences, cameras and scary warning signs. Tourists don’t seem to be much interested in post-medieval fortifications.
But we're also very starved for true "Medieval Castles" like Europe or east Asia, so we take what we can get!
The Rova of Antananarivo /ˈruːvə/ (Malagasy: Rovan'i Manjakamiadana [ˈruvᵊn manˌdzakəmiˈadə̥nᵊ]) is a royal palace complex (rova) in Madagascar that was the home of the sovereigns of the Kingdom of Imerina in the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as of the rulers of the Kingdom of Madagascar in the 19th century. Located in the central highland city of Antananarivo, the Rova occupies the highest point on Analamanga, formerly the highest of Antananarivo's many hills.
If Cape Coast Castle is described as "world renowned", then Elmina should be as well. I live in Ghana their popularity is almost evenly matched.
Also Elmina castle is the oldest and largest European building in existence in sub-Saharan Africa.
One more thing, it is kind of hard to click on specific dots when they are so clustered together. I had to zoom in a lot to see and be able to click on some of the castles I knew were there.
I checked my local area, and it omits interesting castles, instead including palaces, landmarks and world war era fortresses.
Shameful submission.
>This project is in early stages and the information is brought by wikipedia. The goal of this project is to make castle viewing a bit more fun.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48861309
> Neither part of the monument's name is correct. ... was not a "castle" in the traditional sense, but instead may have functioned more like a "prehistoric high rise apartment complex".[8]
My understanding was always that aside from vanity castles like Craigdarroch (https://thecastle.ca) there aren't castles in North America because they're only practical in a pre-cannon world
That one you linked definitely merits inclsion, tho. Had never heard of it. Thanks.
Edit: Or maybe not: apparently it's not considered a castle, despite the name.
Things like Fort Dearborn in Chicago are listed, but all that remains is markers of the perimeter... while Fort Point is a structure that you can visit and walk around.
If forts count as castles, at least do Fort Pitt, which has the blockhouse functional.
Anyways - this is a fun project and it should continue!
Brazil also has a few castles, although not sure if they are classified differently -- https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_castelos_no_Brasil
The Māori built thousands of hilltop fortifications with wooden palisades (Pā), but lacking metal tools they didn’t build with stone.
That said, I'm not sure what definition or list this site uses - as others have already pointed out, there are loads of castle missing I can tell, just from a few that I've visited across Italy.
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44948352
Plymouth is surrounded by them.
why do all the vibecoded slopsites have the same design? i feel icky when i visit one like eternal sunshine of the spotless vibe
If you want to leave a legacy, build something out of stone.
Castle Sween was built in the 11th century (and might still not be the oldest).
Dalhousie Castle was built in 1247 and the oldest bit of the surviving castle is from the 15th century. Most of it is from the 17th century. The roof is post-2004.
The actual lesson is, if you want to leave a legacy, hope someone rebuilds it when it falls apart after you're gone.
Palace of Versailles France
Forbidden City People's Republic of China
Neuschwanstein Castle Germany
Buckingham Palace England
Alhambra Spain
Tower of London England
Windsor Castle England
Kremlin Russia
Red Fort India
Topkapı Palace Turkey
So I could name recognise the top ten, and yeah I won’t argue too hard with the list, just apart from Neuschwanstein - but the second I saw it I realised I did not know the name but “Bavarian fairy castle” clearly deserves its ranking
Edit: I now realise that the site specifically says "Map of the world's great castles & fortresses", so I guess the site considers them fortresses, not castles. I retract my snark.
It counts Clarence House in London in its top 100 as a world famous ‘palace’ - it’s a Georgian townhouse.
Age of sail trading post forts seem a relatively uncontroversial inclusion in comparison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_Frontenac
Might need additional datasets though -- this one is lacking. only ~10 fortresses in France? LOL
The fortress / castle distinction is quite difficult and perhaps not useful? This map classifies the Crac (Krak) des Chevaliers[0], in modern-day Syria, as a "castle" but I would argue it's really a "fortress" (and in fact, one of the best preserved ancient fortresses in the world).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak_des_Chevaliers
Even more ridiculous : Bastille also reported as "renowned ruin". Nothing remains. All stones have disappeared centuries ago.
But the links don't work.
(firefox mobile)
Also, as others pointed out, the map is missing many castles. I also doubt the spread over China, the map only says about 7 castles in whole China? So that seems totally wrong. The definition for a castle must be incorrect, because Japan has attributed many more and that is simply objectively incorrect. Is the chinese palace classified as a castle? If not, why not? If yes then why not other palaces in China? The map is really not very good here. It should begin by a good definition of what is meant with a castle.