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.
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.
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)
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.
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!
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.
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!
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
> 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you submit some map, at least don't have the title contradict the content description:
"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.
Yeah, actually a very cool idea. Hopefully somebody takes it and makes a greatly improved version, as execution is lacking here!
not really castles - it includes palaces for examples and chateaus.
This is off by many degrees of magnitude for Ireland at least: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1nkvqd7/oc...
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.
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.
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.
The map has a category for fortresses too. Which are included in its total count of "castles". So it's seems reasonable to bring them up.
Fair, I think the map is nonsense, but also the idea of 30K castles in Ireland is clearly untrue.
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.
Wasn’t he Swedish?
Same for France, many are missing
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)
Clearly vibe-coded. Cool idea though. I can see what was leveraged from the Wikipedia data set.
Side question: why does Claude prefer dark backgrounds with low-contrast text?
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.
https://thecastlemap.com/
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Not sure if they count, but the site appears to be missing loads of British star-forts built around the great lakes, st. lawrence, and eastern Canada!
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
It’s missing the extensive Napoleonic-era Western Fortifications on the opposite side of Dover from the much more famous Dover Castle.
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.
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!
This is not a "map of castles".
I checked my local area, and it omits interesting castles, instead including palaces, landmarks and world war era fortresses.
Shameful submission.
Very cool project, but obviously missing (too) many great castles. I'm not sure if that way of measuring popularity is really well done.
Missing a lot, at least three around my home town.
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.
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!
The 10 most famous castles in the world
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
Why nothing in North America but forts? There are lots of ancient structures that should be considered. Ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montezuma_Castle_National_Monu...
There's at least a couple on the map, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapultepec_Castle
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.
Castle means fortified stone building then? What are you considering? Wikipedia has many more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_castles_in_the_United_...
> # Etymology
> 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 are practical against cannons but only if built with thicker walls than typical.
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.
Hearst Castle Missing. Please add it, it’s probably the most famous castle in California.
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.
I went to a castle in Dunedin, New Zealand, but NZ seems to be castle-less: Larnach Castle, https://www.larnachcastle.co.nz/.
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 page does give a pointer to Wikidata, I for one would love to see your example included.
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
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44948352
Wrong title. Wrong not even by two orders of magnitude.
There are only 20 castles in the world?
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.
It’s a Russia hoax.
Really luke it, but on mobile (firefox) the links (to wikipedia etc) just don't work..
Clicking on full story doesn't do anything. It closes the popup (mobile android)
it's part of a webring of vibecoded slopsites
yes, webrings! time for a comeback. i just found an AI agent trained on AOL chat room materials out in the wild, way to go Bending Spoons
why do all the vibecoded slopsites have the same design? i feel icky when i visit one like eternal sunshine of the spotless vibe
The ones in the area where I used to live are all missing.
We just stayed in Dalhousie Castle, the oldest in Scotland. Very beautiful and well maintained, with lots of spooky history.
If you want to leave a legacy, build something out of stone.
This dataset is bad. The North Carolina state capitol is a castle?
Hungary has more than a lot missing https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyarorsz%C3%A1gi_v%C3%A1rak_...
Immediately curious about the concentration of castles on the Ghanaian coast. Wonder what that's about.
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.
The title of the page is "Map of the world's great castles & fortresses". So those are latter.
There is no taxonomy of these things you could make that will not cause some eyebrow raising choices.
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.
Australia doesn’t have a single castle!
Who would've built them before modern Australia started to exist tho?
Interesting that in Canada Rideau Hall counts, but Casa Loma does not.
or Chateau Frontenac in Quebec? What's the criteria for being a castle?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_Frontenac
They use a crappy model I guess. This reeks AI.
Invading Australia is looking pretty tempting right now.
Invading Australia in 1500s is looking pretty tempting, you mean.
Love it..
But the links don't work.
(firefox mobile)
Where is the castle of James Damore?
Château de Saint-Cloud, near Paris, reported as "renowned ruin" ??? What a joke! Only the gardens remain.
Even more ridiculous : Bastille also reported as "renowned ruin". Nothing remains. All stones have disappeared centuries ago.
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.
Is a palace a castle? If so then there are a huge number missing in India.
There are many castles near my parents house in france. I don't see any of them? AI generated?
Slop
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.
Heavily lacking at least in Poland. Reeks clanker powered. I miss the times where actual hobbyists were doing stuff.