There are over 15,000 castles in Germany alone. Granted, many of them are ruins or in various state of ruin. But others remain in good condition or have gone through a rebuild.
We spent some time this summer travelling through Germany and saw something like ten castles in nine days. Including spending two nights in Trendleberg castle, having dinner at Sababurg, seeing Heidelberg Castle and Neuschwanstein. Sababurg is very pretty - the gardens are beautiful.
It is a ciudadela… it doesn’t have a central tower, but occupies the top of your classical “impassable on all sides but the heavily-guarded path” hill, same as the Alcázares of Segovia and Toledo (which do have the “European” look).
Muslim-built castles are different from Christian-built ones, but not easier to take.
Although it does look like a palace now , it’s main purpose was certainly as a castle (or fortress). It was built to regulate and tax the shipping that sailed through the narrowest point of the Øresund, which separates Denmark from Sweden.
Eh, it was far more of a fortress than something like Neuschwanstein, which made the list and was designed primarily as a palace.
I think it was just an oversight. That list is very UK heavy and they tossed in a couple of other famous examples to balance it out. However it is a big rambling complex, so perhaps it just didn’t fit into the preconception of a castle as a single distinct building unit. I think Carcassonne is storybook pretty, but as it is more a fortified town, I can see leaving it off the list. It could be the Alhambra split the difference enough they decided not to include it. A mistake if so, though. Ultimately it was a singular citadel for a town.
Yeah, Germany seems lousy with awesome castles. One of these days I’d like to go over and hit several myself. Veste Coburg, Hohenwerfen, Hochsterwitz, Plassenburg and the aforementioned Hohenzollern would certainly be high on the the list ( much higher than the admittedly very attractive Neuschwanstein ).
Burg Eltz was the first castle I ever visited, so it’s always on my favorites list, not just for sentimental reasons; the setting is spectacular.
I’d love to see many of the castles linked in this thread. Both the Alhambra and Prague were already on my “wanna see” list. Now I’ve added several more.
Neuschwanstein is interesting. The setting is beautiful - the lake, the Alps. But its a palace, and an unfinished one - not a castle. And relatively modern at that. Its PACKED with tourists, the tour is quick (in order to get the thousands through every day that show up), and, unlike a lot of other castles in Europe, its really not terribly convenient to anything but itself (and Howenschwangau).
I can’t remember the Arabic phrase, but its nickname to Muslims was “the Bone in the Throat of Islam”. For an understanding of why, enlarge the photo in that link and see how tiny the people at the wall seem (they’re invisible on the small photo) and realize that the castle has been in ruins for centuries.
To anybody recommended in castles I’d recommend David McCauley’s book and video Castle, an illustrated YA book that follows a fictional castle from inception through building through war to modern day ruins.
For America-
In the palace meaning you can’t beat Hearst Castleof course, though for the original meaning (place of refuge/fortification) the Alamo (though a mission rather than a military structure) is probably the closest (drawing of how it appeared in 1836).
Castles I would most like to see that would be off the “short lists” (short list being Windsor, Neuschwanstein, Tower of London, and other world famous ones) include those associated with Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, whose entire life revolve around (and should be told around) castles. He grew up in two castles- Burg Veldenstein in Bavaria and Schloß Mauterndorf in Austria, both of which belonged to his beloved godfather and probable namesake Hermann von Epenstein, a doctor and businessman with a purchased knighthood who bought them when they were in ruins and restored them. He later bequeathed them to his much younger wife who bequeathed them to Göring. (Von Epenstein was born Jewish; Göring was actually expelled from a school for defending him as the greatest German he knew during an essay assignment.) He met his first wife at her brother’s castle in Sweden (where he crash landed during a blizzard while bringing the brother home- nobody injured); she was there because she was estranged from her husband who lived in this castle.
Göring and Carin were a tragic love story in the tradition of Wagner and pretty much every other German love story. They lived as impoverished refugees after the Beer Hall Putsch, and she died just as he began to rise in the world. When he became, after her death, among the wealthiest men in Europe due to the Reich he built a castle/palace- began as a lodge- called Carinhall in honor of his first wife (who died in near poverty a few years before it was begun). Main wing. One of the galleries- they stretched for more than 2 miles around the property. He actually looted other castles and palaces for architectural parts and decorations to give it the illusion of being centuries old. It housed what was possible the most valuable art collection probably ever assembled (Göring famously helped himself to pieces from private collections, museums, and archives). Today it’s in ruinsbecause Göring had it demolished in the final days of the war to keep the Soviets from occupying it.
Interesting thing about Göring is that in the final week of the war he ended up back where he’d begun- in Mauterndorf. In one of his last official acts Hitler had Göring, his [second] wife, and their 7 year old daughter arrested and ordered them shot; he was arrested at one of his other castles, somehow convinced his gestapo guards to take him and his family to Mauterndorfwhich was better provisioned and less likely to be on the path of Allies, and somehow convinced them further not to kill him and his family. (Probably a combination of his considerable intelligence and diplomatic skill [he could be charming as Ka when he wanted] and manipulating the extreme confusion- “Hitler obviously didn’t send this order would he? I’m his second in command- ask him. Can’t ask him, no communications into the border, well let’s wait a day or two… here, have some Dom Perignon, take a handful of those jewels also you may need them soon… what, the Fuhrer and Goebbels are dead and your liege and lord Himmler is nowhere to be found? Well if this is a mistake then it proves your orders to kill us were probably a mistake, and if it is not then either I am now Fuhrer, or Doenitz is… and either way your orders to kill me are not only irrelevant but probably would be a very bad idea as they’ll get you into trouble with the new regime if you’re lucky and the Allies if you’re not”. So he survived through a week of house arrest and intrigue so that he could go to Nuremberg (very near Veldenstein) and become, strangely enough, the most passionate and eloquent defender of the man who’d ordered his entire family’s murder at the War Crimes trials.
Of course having been a LION IN WINTER fan since my teen years I’d love to see Chinon. And though it’s an abbey/cathedral rather than castle, I’d love to see Mont St. Michel.
The irony of Neuschwannstein is that it nearly bankrupted Bavaria (especially when teamed with Ludwig’s other boychild monstrosities [I suspect today he’d have more in common with Michael Jackson than Wagner]), yet today it is so popular with tourists that it has paid for itself many many times and is a major asset to the area.
They are missing Chambord and Chenonceau in France as well - which are the age of palace as castle and not true fortifications - but which are both spectacular and as castle like many.
Now THOSE are castles! The images in the OP are nice, but 14/15 didn’t invoke any real castle-lust in me. But the two you’ve linked look like what I always tried to draw as a kid when I wanted to draw a picture of a castle…
Joe
Japanese castles are, indeed, some of the most beautiful and breath-taking.
Is Beijing’s Forbidden City also a castle?
Just half a mile from where I am sitting there is Newark Castle. Unfortunately it was partly demolished on the orders of Oliver Cromwell, but it is famous as the place where “bad” king John died.
But other Spanish castles, like Sagunto, make the Alhambra look small by comparison. I’ve seen other castles following Sagunto’s model of having the whole top of the hill fortified but with relatively few buildings.
Oh, and take a look at Karlstejn. I’d call going there one of the high points of our visit to the Czech Republic, only it’s difficult to come up with any low points (oh, yes: when I fell down ripping my trousers at the knees).
Sampiro, fascinating info about Goerring.
I think Edinburgh Castle’s very nice… of course my view of it from work would have to be the other side of it!
Does anybody know the name of that famous ruined castle that’s completely fake? (I swear I’ve read about and or seen it on TV- it’s a European town that built a ruined castle from ground up to cash in on American tourism- not Eurodisney).
Speaking of the Alhambra, a turn of the (19th-20th) century Boston millionaire built a 1:10 replica of it for his winter home in St. Augustine- Zorayda Castle. The effect is not quite the same (there’s a reason other than the Gallician/Celtic connection that Loreena McKennitt filmed her concertat the original).
Speaking of castles/mansions/United States, William Gillette was the most popular stage actor of the late 19th/early 20th century and made a fortune from playing Sherlock Holmes especially. I love his castle in Connecticut; I haven’t seen it in person since I was a kid but I understand that it’s more beautiful than ever now after a long expensive restoration.
That’s why there are like 3 of them left in Japan, whereas you can’t walk in England without tripping over them. You’da figured that Japan woulda been up on the stone technology.
Yep, it was pretty crowded, there were different lines for tours in different languages. We got in the French line because it was very short. 
The murals inside are beautiful too, and it has a CAVE room!
I’m staying there tonight 
