Or Obidos, Portugal, which was a neat place to visit.
I’ve taken the tour there as well. I think I knew before I went that it was built for show more than it was for defense. I suppose it wasn’t quite as lavish as I expected. By the time you’ve got the King’s living quarters, and offices, and staff, and attendants, and kitchens and infrastructure to support all those staff and attendants, it starts to feel like you could use a bit more room. That’s the difference between a palace and I castle, I guess. I’m sure there are some back passages and such that aren’t on the tour; I was looking for the way up to the top of the tower and never did find it.
I wasn’t disappointed with the location. Seemed like it was right in the foothills of the Alps, so probably no one’s going to be attacking from the south. Plus, the day I went was kinda damp and overcast. After the tour I took a trail leading down from the castle, along the river, over walkways anchored into the wall of a chasm, and came out near a pasture of the most contented looking cows I’ve ever seen. As I walked along the lake the sun came out. It turned out to be kind of a storybook day to see a storybook castle.
My pictures didn’t come out, but you can’t have everything.
Gormenghast kinda blurs the line between the two. But, then, Gormenghast never made any economic/political sense at all. It seems to be a self-contained economic unit despite having no farmland within its walls and controlling no land outside them.
Well, Neuschwanstein never was designed for actual defense, and never was finished as planned – King Ludwig died before it could be, and no successor cared to spend the money. E.g., the castle was supposed to include a tall tower-keep or Bergfried (with a chapel, of all things, on the ground floor), but that never was built, though you can still see the outlines of the foundation. (A German Bergfried differs from an Anglo-French donjon-keep in that it is not intended for peacetime residence, but is only built for a last-ditch redoubt-of-retreat during a siege or assault; in a German castle, the Palas or residential block is a separate building from the Bergfried tower.)
I’ll include this one
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of Guédelon castle in France. Not because it’s especially beautiful, but because I think it’s really interesting. It’s a 25-year long experimental archaeology project to build a medieval castle from scratch using contemporary tools, techniques and materials.
There’s a 5-part BBC documentary which sends 3 English archaeologists to participate in the project, which castle fans will probably enjoy. You may be able to catch them on YouTube; search for “Secrets of the Castle”.
Reporting back from Cathar country- Carcassonne is faaaabulous. Even if I was traveling with two Ruskinite conservationists.
Courtesy bump. This is in today’s Yahoo! listing:
Secrets of the World’s Most Spectacular Fairy-Tale Castles
Sophie Forbes
November 9, 2015