First, its a shame to see an important piece of 14th century history lost.
Its a good thing Genghis Khan and histories other invaders didn’t know the secret to breaching a castle. Send in kids with Cigarettes. 
That castle looked impregnable in those pictures. Apparently looks are deceiving and it was mostly for show rather than any real defense.
http://www.mandh-online.com/news/content/1816/fire_destroys_famous_14th_century_medieval_castle
A lot of castles built near the end of the age of castle warfare were later converted into homes for nobility. Those conversions would often make them much less serviceable as castles.
I know that any medieval castle actually used as a military fortress c. 14th century would probably not be built such that it could easily be destroyed by fire.
Interesting for much of the era of castles in Europe, many castles were motte-and-bailey designs that were mostly good for brief resistance and were often built of logs. While motte-and-bailey wooden castles continued to be built, after c. 12th century they were rare as new construction in Western Europe as stone castles started to seriously overtake them.
Wood actually isn’t as easily susceptible to fire as you might imagine, though. A well built motte-and-bailey built out of logs wouldn’t burn up that easily like this castle did. That’s why I suspect extensive living apartments and such had been built in the castle itself, I imagine the stone shell has probably survived much of the blaze.
The fire happened after the last tour of the day, so it was probably largely empty when the fire started, which was probably also a large factor in why it got so large. If it were being used as either a castle or noble estate, it would have been filled with people, and there would have been a good chance of someone noticing the fire while it was small and extinguishing it.
The fire started on the roof. The kids were smoking in the dry grass outside the castle. The grass started, the embers floated to the roof and no more roof.
Jesus Christ – I hope they find the little bastards.
Indeed. Smoking cigarettes outside a castle. Whatever next? String 'em up I say.:rolleyes:
When I was around seven or eight, a kid ion the block burned down our neighbor’s shed by playing with fire. He would start some dry weeds on fire and then stamp them out. As he got better at stamping them out, he’d let the fire grow just a little larger before extinguishing it until one got a little too large and that was all she wrote.
Fortunately, it was just a shed and not the main house, but still it shared everyone so much that it kept us from playing with fire for at least a couple of weeks.