Hi thanks for the feedback and thank you Marklit to submit it here!
Thecastlemap.com is one of the websites I operate. I also operate trainrouter.com, sunshineatlas.com. and europebeachmap.com.
Honestly, I did not want to focus too much on this website due to what I thought of a market of low demand. However, there are so many critical comments. Hence, I will fix it properly and this will be one of the websites I will fully commit to.
I appreciate everything guys even if you probably do not like the website. The reason why I made the website is because I reallly like castles....
There is a lot of stuff missing. I'm from a region in Germany where every other village has it's own castle, ruin or palace. There needs to be some selection, otherwise it's just more overwhelming. Therefore I do like the map, and it's very good imho that there is some tier-selector to pick out the good ones.
The trouble is that the definition of "castle" varies considerably between countries. For instance, the German classification divides them into "Schloss" and "Burg", but these can include anything from earthworks to barely present ruined remains of a foundation to buildings that resemble a larger than average house. French classification - under the term "chateau" and its subdivisions - is even more generous. Compare that with the Polish classification which is more strict and precise, differentiating between manors, palaces, strongholds, and permanent fortified complexes, for instance.
As the other commenter said: Europe is filled to the brim with fortifications and castles. It's almost pointless to make a complete map - every second place will have one. So I agree with the approach of having a selection. But how to select? Here of course everybody will disagree - on one hand we surely have the obvious and well known tourist hotspots, but on the other hand basically everything else can fall under "hidden gems". Transylvania only has over 150 such fortified churches... what can you do with so much raw information?
Please don't be detered by the less constructive comments, there are a myriad of approaches one could take and it's impossible to please everyone. Even if it has failings I think it's a great site and I'm grateful. Plus let's not forget it's delightfully free of advertising/ pushy banners to sign-up or pay!
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.
Inferring pronunciation from spelling is very regular in French; the reverse, not so: there may be many ways to spell a sound like “o”, each with a different meaning.
But you don’t pronounce it and in your example you know it’s plural without the x.
I would say it’s technical debt but rest assured that the language is alive and will eventually drop the x. Perhaps we will have a s instead of a x first.
Interesting but very difficult to perform in the right way. Example: Italy has maybe 45k buildings that could show on that map https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categoria:Castelli_d%27Italia
but they can't be collected by looking at the English Wikipedia so it's almost empty compared to what could be. Other countries, same problem.
Somebody suggested in other comments that the data could be from OpenStreetMap. Or let people add their own castles, but then you have all the sort of problems of content moderation.
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.
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.
I am working on fixing the site. It is vibe coded which I understand is a problem. Ai took my career path so I have use it as well although I fucking hate AI. I like creating stuff though.
I have only used English Wikipedia for putting castles on the map. To some degrees using Wikipedia of other languages will fix the problem partially (Which some of you have suggested). The ultimate fix would be a community who does all the suggestions, because all datasets are wrong anyways.
The claim that France does have 45k castles is just so wrong lol. Yes the site does miss many castles and some are defined wrong. I am working on that and I am really thankful for all the suggestions which will be credited in the changelog: https://thecastlemap.com/changelog/
Anyways I am working on the site and updating it rather quickly because I never thought people wanted a castle site.
If you do so, please include Esslingen castle (Germany). It's still standing and they have a lovely (and famous with Americans) Christmas market there.https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esslinger_Burg
I love this project, like you I'm a big castle fan and tourist.
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.
It’s cool. One issue I have is that the colours for “Castle & château” and “Ruin” are very similar.
When you tap a marker often you can’t see the castle in the photo because it’s cropped to fit a rectangle with an unusual aspect ratio. That element should be allowed to adjust its height so the image is scaled at its own aspect ratio rather than cropped. Eg you can only see the mounds of Berwick Castle and Bamburgh Castle in the North East of England.
The North American bits are a little weird. Colorado has an entry for Bent's Fort but not for Fort Vasquez, though both are rebuilt tourist attractions. Then there's Bishop's Castle, an actual norman style castle built outside of Pueblo by some crazed guy
And Casa Loma is only a castle in the same sense as the one at Disneyworld. These may be textually and superficially similar to historic castles but are completely different. A knowledgable historian would not curate this list. The author should indicate this is just a technical demonstration.
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!
Palácio da Bolsa in Porto is not, at all, a castle. It was built in the XIX century as the stock market and never served defensive purposes as castles would. Not to speak about the sheer amount of misses in Portugal. This is off by a lot!
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?
> 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
Castles became star forts, with stone/brick augmented with massive amount of earth. These were relatively effective against artillery into the 20th century.
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.
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.
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!
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?
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.
There's no need to correct. They had a lovely holiday at what they thought was the oldest castle in Scotland. Leave them to it instead of jumping in with 'actually, I've identified at least three castles older, and while we can't be certain which is the oldest fort in Scotland, we can be confident that it wasn't the one you thought you had a nice time at'
I have lived in Austria before. I have been to some of them in Austria and South Tyrol. I think most of the castles should be visible on the map although not all are added yet. Will fix that.
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.
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
Castles come up for sale fairly regularly in the UK. They are (generally) relatively inexpensive to buy, but ruinously expensive to renovate and maintain.
Although there are plenty of old coastal fortifications, which don't appear to count even though things like Fort Siloso in Singapore (a WW2 vintage concrete bunker) apparently do.
Ignorant list. If you are including smaller form factor forts/castles from Europe only then you have to include them from India as well. Example “Thikana” etc etc.
Meta commentary: this is clearly a vibe-coded frontend to a low quality "dataset" with substantial omissions.
The real value and work would be someone actually compiling and creating a high-quality castle dataset, in which case anyone could vibe-code a similar frontend to it.
Potentially a agent (swarm) could do this, if properly integrated into OSM, wikis, libraries, photographs etc. But it wouldn't be quick and would still benefit from a human-in-the-loop verifying each entry.
I hope that I can be the person who can fix the site properly. Yes this is vibe coded and the focus was to create a concept to see if the site had potential. Now after someone somehow made a post here which got so popular, I now will focus on fixing the site rather than testing the concept since it is proven that people do have an interest.
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.
It also lists some "castles" that no longer exist, e.g., Fort Detroit, which was where downtown is and very much not extant (and not to be confused with Fort Wayne to the southwest of downtown, which does exist but isn't on the map). This is just some AI slop wasting our time.
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.
Neuschwanstein was completed in 1886. Undeniably a very archetypal castle. So much so that of course it was the basis for Disney's Sleeping Beauty castle, which opened at Disneyland in Anaheim in 1955 - at which time the castle it took its inspiration from was not even 70 years old.
Now Disney's Sleeping Beauty castle is itself over 70 years old, making it arguably just as much a historical 'castle' as Neuschwanstein.
Hey, so, I know everyone is complaining about their favourite castle/fortress/palace missing but... it's missing the Acropolis.
The Acropolis, in Athens. There's no more famous castle than that. Or fortress, whatever you want to call it.
I get that this is vibe coded but I really wonder how the data was compiled. This will take serious effort to fix if it's so deficient it doesn't include the most famous castle of all. And I don't mean it will take iterating the vibe coding, this needs serious knowledge work that I don't think an LLM is sufficient for, sorry.
"Bro", the Parthenon is a temple. The Acropolis is a citadel.
The Acropolis of Athens (Ancient Greek: ἡ Ἀκρόπολις τῶν Ἀθηνῶν, romanized: hē Akropolis tōn Athēnōn; Modern Greek: Ακρόπολη Αθηνών, romanized: Akrópoli Athinón) is an ancient citadel located on a rocky outcrop above the city of Athens, Greece, and contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historical significance, the most famous being the Parthenon.
Thecastlemap.com is one of the websites I operate. I also operate trainrouter.com, sunshineatlas.com. and europebeachmap.com.
Honestly, I did not want to focus too much on this website due to what I thought of a market of low demand. However, there are so many critical comments. Hence, I will fix it properly and this will be one of the websites I will fully commit to.
I appreciate everything guys even if you probably do not like the website. The reason why I made the website is because I reallly like castles....
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