The World's 2,400 Castles

135

mmarklit about 5 hours ago 101 commentsRead Article on thecastlemap.com

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mxfh•about 4 hours ago

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.

carra•about 2 hours ago

I would take it as just rounding 2,435 -> 2,400. No big deal.

monknomo•about 2 hours ago

The point is not the rounding, it is that it is not counting a total number of castles, but rather some subset of 'significant' castles

deepvibrations•about 4 hours ago

Yeah, actually a very cool idea. Hopefully somebody takes it and makes a greatly improved version, as execution is lacking here!

Romario77•about 3 hours ago

not really castles - it includes palaces for examples and chateaus.

bootlooped•about 1 hour ago

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.

clickety_clack•about 4 hours ago

This is off by many degrees of magnitude for Ireland at least: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1nkvqd7/oc...

AStrangeMorrow•about 3 hours ago

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)

4ndrewl•about 2 hours ago

Missing all of the "moorish" forts in Andalusia...

dbspin•about 4 hours ago

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.

xg15•about 3 hours ago

Yeah, in the other direction, I see at least one WWII-era "pillbox" bunker in France (part of the Marginot Line?) listed as "fortress".

It's a nice idea, but the range seems extremely broad on the one hand but very incomplete on the other hand.

bluGill•about 3 hours ago

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

RugnirViking•about 3 hours ago

*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.

clickety_clack•about 2 hours ago

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”.

Bedon292•about 3 hours ago

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.

dbspin•about 3 hours ago

Fair, I think the map is nonsense, but also the idea of 30K castles in Ireland is clearly untrue.

arethuza•about 4 hours ago

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.

tengwar2•44 minutes ago

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.

tgdn•about 3 hours ago

Same for France, many are missing

Bedon292•about 3 hours ago

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.

mr_toad•about 2 hours ago

In France castles are all called Châteaux.

ButlerianJihad•about 2 hours ago

What a coincidence! In France, all hats are called chapeaux!

mrjay42•about 3 hours ago

Nice project :3

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!)

tagami•about 1 hour ago

My first dotcom began by listing German castles for sale after the wall fell. https://web.archive.org/web/19970102101502/http://www.re.com...

geff82•about 1 hour ago

And if I ever make an exit, the money will buy me a Germany castle! I want to be a good guardian of one.

Yhippa•about 3 hours ago

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?

Aardwolf•about 1 hour ago

That's less than I expected for worldwide

Apparently Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, etc... were not really into castles, while Japan was?

superhuzza•about 1 hour ago

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?

SubiculumCode•about 3 hours ago

https://thecastlemap.com/

Peer’s Certificate issuer is not recognized.

HTTP Strict Transport Security: false HTTP Public Key Pinning: false

Certificate chain:

pimlottc•about 1 hour ago

Is this anything more substantial than a weekend-coded public data scrape?

relevant_stats•about 1 hour ago

It's worse than that, the underlying data is more than questionable.

suzzer99•about 2 hours ago

I had to look up Madagascar's castle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rova_of_Antananarivo

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.

yabones•about 3 hours ago

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

NicuCalcea•about 1 hour ago

I imagine they only downloaded whatever was tagged as "castle" in wikidata. Compare these two:

Bran Castle: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q390275

Citadel Hill: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q321867

mr_toad•about 3 hours ago

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.

yabones•about 3 hours ago

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!

prmph•about 3 hours ago

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.

runxel•about 4 hours ago

Very cool project, but obviously missing (too) many great castles. I'm not sure if that way of measuring popularity is really well done.

lujz•about 4 hours ago

Missing a lot, at least three around my home town.

r721•about 1 hour ago

Comment from dev in previous 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

relevant_stats•about 4 hours ago

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.

1970-01-01•about 4 hours ago

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...

sharkjacobs•about 4 hours ago

> # 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

bluGill•about 3 hours ago

Castles are practical against cannons but only if built with thicker walls than typical.

monomers•about 4 hours ago

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.

1970-01-01•about 4 hours ago

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_...

shagie•about 2 hours ago

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.

deton3991•about 4 hours ago

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.

Brendinooo•about 3 hours ago

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!

mr_toad•about 2 hours ago

It also lists the Bastille, which was completely demolished and is now a public square.

allturtles•about 4 hours ago

This dataset is bad. The North Carolina state capitol is a castle?

the__alchemist•about 2 hours ago

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?

kinow•about 4 hours ago

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

mr_toad•about 2 hours ago

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.

detritus•about 3 hours ago

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.

Isamu•about 4 hours ago

The page does give a pointer to Wikidata, I for one would love to see your example included.

geff82•about 1 hour ago

Interesting, still I miss most castles around me.

jollyllama•about 4 hours ago

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

notorandit•about 2 hours ago

Italy, like Germany, Austria and maybe a few more European countries host more than 5,000 "castles".

hggh•about 4 hours ago

Wrong title. Wrong not even by two orders of magnitude.

IncreasePosts•about 4 hours ago

There are only 20 castles in the world?

CrzyLngPwd•about 2 hours ago

Since forts are included in the USA, there are loads of Napoleonic forts missing in the UK.

Plymouth is surrounded by them.

modeless•about 4 hours ago

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.

the111•about 3 hours ago

It’s a Russia hoax.

samfar90•about 4 hours ago

Clicking on full story doesn't do anything. It closes the popup (mobile android)

losteric•about 4 hours ago

it's part of a webring of vibecoded slopsites

The_Blade•about 4 hours ago

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

sebnukem2•about 3 hours ago

The ones in the area where I used to live are all missing.

meerita•about 2 hours ago

Would be amazing to see which one of these are on sale.

pizzathyme•about 4 hours ago

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.

philipwhiuk•about 2 hours ago

I mean no, it's not.

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.

makeusgreat•about 3 hours ago

Hearst Castle Missing. Please add it, it’s probably the most famous castle in California.

the111•about 3 hours ago

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.

lifeisstillgood•about 3 hours ago

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

BasieP2•about 3 hours ago

Really luke it, but on mobile (firefox) the links (to wikipedia etc) just don't work..

pastemato•about 4 hours ago

Immediately curious about the concentration of castles on the Ghanaian coast. Wonder what that's about.

Svip•about 4 hours ago

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.

jameshart•about 4 hours ago

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.

guyzero•about 4 hours ago

The title of the page is "Map of the world's great castles & fortresses". So those are latter.

hurghada•about 4 hours ago

Hungary has more than a lot missing https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyarorsz%C3%A1gi_v%C3%A1rak_...

guyzero•about 4 hours ago

Interesting that in Canada Rideau Hall counts, but Casa Loma does not.

pluc•about 4 hours ago

or Chateau Frontenac in Quebec? What's the criteria for being a castle?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_Frontenac

weezing•about 3 hours ago

They use a crappy model I guess. This reeks AI.

insane_dreamer•about 1 hour ago

Great project! Kudos to the designer.

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

onion2k•about 4 hours ago

Invading Australia is looking pretty tempting right now.

a3w•about 4 hours ago

Invading Australia in 1500s is looking pretty tempting, you mean.

andsoitis•about 4 hours ago

Australia doesn’t have a single castle!

weezing•about 3 hours ago

Who would've built them before modern Australia started to exist tho?

dolmen•about 4 hours ago

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.

BasieP2•about 3 hours ago

Love it..

But the links don't work.

(firefox mobile)

holoduke•about 4 hours ago

There are many castles near my parents house in france. I don't see any of them? AI generated?

mangogogo•29 minutes ago

thinking the same here. combining the inaccurate data with the suspicious-looking sheen to the UI makes me think it was made with an LLM.

philipwhiuk•about 2 hours ago

Missing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanbrugh_Castle

sam_lowry_•about 3 hours ago

Where is the castle of James Damore?

drstewart•about 4 hours 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.

dyauspitr•about 4 hours ago

Is a palace a castle? If so then there are a huge number missing in India.

hbcdbff•about 4 hours ago

Slop

shevy-java•about 4 hours ago

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.

weezing•about 3 hours ago

Heavily lacking at least in Poland. Reeks clanker powered. I miss the times where actual hobbyists were doing stuff.