Forget ticking off humdrum attractions and landmarks. For travellers with a soft spot for towers, battlements and drawbridges, there’s a handy tool that brings the world’s castles in one place.
Across 141 countries and currently featuring 7,738 landmarks, Castlemap presents the world’s castles, fortresses, palaces and ruins on a free, interactive map. The platform utilises open source data from Wikidata, with coordinates and founding dates for each landmark. Each is pinned on the map with a photograph and bitesize story about its history.
Castlemap’s atlas is divided into four overarching categories: castles and châteaux, fortresses and forts, palaces and residences, as well as ruins, which covers any of the three aforementioned that no longer stand in the former glory, or may have even vanished completely.
The platform’s founder, @Flightmussy on X, described the atlas as being a curated, rather than exhaustive list, with each entry requiring a photograph, exact coordinates and Wikipedia article.
This includes a sweep of at least 25 languages of Wikipedia articles, which means the map features a diverse range of structures – from German burgs, to French châteaux and Italian castellos.
