Exploring The World’s Most Enchanting Castles
Great castles make for great historical sites around the globe. There are tens of thousands of truly remarkable places to visit worldwide.
That’s why it’s time to visit the most alluring castles in the world. Dating back to ancient times, the act of building a castle – both defensive and symbolic – reveals much about our histories.
It shows us incredible things about the tools and techniques of the periods in which they were erected, bringing these eras alive. Here are my favorite castles anywhere on Earth.
The Top 10 Castles In The World
Below, in no particular order, are the ten castles worldwide that best evoke the romance, splendor, and magic we associate with these edifices:
1. Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany
Courtesy WikipediaThe 19th-century Romanticist revival of German architecture is exemplified by the fairy-tale Neuschwanstein Castle, which hugs the curve of a rock ridge high in the Bavarian Alps.
Construction of this castle began in 1869 when Ludwig II of Bavaria began creating his private retreat on the site of an old hunting lodge. The king, a long-time recluse, died in an ‘unexplained drowning’ in 1886, and the unfinished palace opened to the public a year later, quickly becoming one of the most visited tourist destinations in Europe.
More than 61 million people have made the pilgrimage to this fantasy of an old-time castle that oozes medieval aesthetics – inspiration for Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty castle – and where 1.3 million visitors of all ages come every year to gawp at this magical piece of Bavarian history.
2. Bran Castle, Romania
Known to locals as ‘the Daughters Tower’ – and now popularly known as ‘Dracula’s Castle’ to the many visitors who flock there each year to learn the macabre details of how Bram Stoker’s vampire was supposedly once a real-life resident – it was made to evoke, from the very first moment you notice it, the raw, gloomy, stark whiteness of bones dug up from a grave. It is a scenic cliff-top castle, home to multiple layers of culture and history.
Its half-incomplete, turreted designs are a standout mix of Renaissance and Gothic, and it has shuffled between various owners, from Hungarian nobles to the princely family of neighboring Wallachia, in the 13th and 14th centuries.
Destroyed by Mongol invaders in 1242, it was rebuilt in the 1300s as a watchtower over a pass through the Carpathian Mountains intended as an eastern bulwark against Ottoman invasion. Bran Castle belongs less – but perhaps rather more interestingly – to the legends of Dracula than it does to the shifting intrigues of the nations and peoples who once embroiled themselves in its walls and towers. Bran Castle is now a museum village and a significant tourism destination in Transylvania.
But for travelers hoping to snap a photo of the famed castle Greeks knew as Dracula, it is in part a place of commemoration and doubtless economic value to perpetuate the Dracula legend and keep it alive after the 1970s, when sufficient inquiries from foreign tourists were still sufficient reason to keep visitors coming in. It is home to a seemingly endless display of vampire paraphernalia, movie posters, and ghoulish costume photo opportunities. It is also very far from Romania.
It is more than a few minute’s train ride away from the closest thing to a city in Maramureş. Plus, it also belongs less – but perhaps rather more interestingly – to the legends of Vlad III, prince of Wallachia from the 1450s to the 1470s, and more famously known in Romania as Vlad Țepeş – not Dracula.
That is because at Bran Castle, as at most places that go out of their way to claim themselves Dracula’s castle, the medieval past is not well-remembered.
3. Eilean Donan Castle, Scotland
Eilean Donan squats on a tidal island where three great sea lochs meet in Scotland’s Western Highlands. It’s a cliché to say that this Highlands castle is one of the world’s most beautiful and romantic, yet so it is.
Eilean Donan was originally built in the 13th century as a fortified home for the Clan Mackenzie. Its defenses were destroyed in 1719 during the Jacobite risings and restored in the early 20th century.
The stone causeway linking Eilean Donan to the Scottish mainland is a powerful draw, taking in visitors from all over the world to a dose of fairy-tale imagery. The photogenic setting has been used in Highlander, and The World Is Not Enough. And you can get close at low tide, walking out onto the little island itself.
4. Eltz Castle, Germany
The Eltz Castle, perched amid the forests of the Rhineland, is a genuine medieval palace that has been owned and occupied continuously by the same family — the House of Eltz — for more than 800 years.
The castle dates to the 12th century and the medieval German period. Built-in Romanesque and Gothic architectural styles, it stands around an inner courtyard and is bordered by turrets and crenellated mural crowns.
Cut off by the river Elzbach on three sides, it is also imposing, protected, and impressive. From April through November, the castle is open to the public, and tours of the lavish grounds and rooms where 33 generations of the prolific House of Elts made their home are available.
5. Hohenzollern Castle, Germany
High on Baden-Württemberg’s Mount Hohenzollern, a stately German castle bellows the ancestral homeland of the imperial Hohenzollern dynasty who ruled over the German kingdoms of Prussia and Brandenburg.
The castle dates back to the original construction of around 1100 AD, but 19th-century additions were modeled after the original design by a Prussian architect named Friedrich August Stüler, who used original stones from the site.
The towering edifice resides over wide territories of gardens and military defenses surrounding its stately buildings and chapels. Visitors today can explore the inner workings of the castle complex, or they can embark on an easy 45-minute hike up from the valley below.
A neo-Gothic/Romanticist knight’s marvel, Hohenzollern was the haunting setting for the 2016 psychological horror film A Cure for Wellness. Free audio guides make the castle, which is open year-round, a royal, historical, and scenic destination for all who wish to choose to visit.
6. Hohenwerfen Castle, Austria
Seen dramatically perched atop a burly 155-metre rock promontory, the medieval Hohenwerfen Fortress appears perfectly at home in the Austrian alpine scenery of the Salzach Valley. Built during the 11th century by prince-archbishops to dominate nearby salt mining resources and trade routes, centuries of continuous habitation have created a hefty citadel with numerous fully preserved living quarters, armories, and defenses, whose panoramic views from atop the surrounding Berchtesgaden Alps and Tennen Mountains remain unparalleled.
Today, visitors can tour the fortress and its grounds, viewing the internal architecture and defenses up close; they can also partake in cultural exhibitions, experience falconry displays, and dine at a tavern located at the south end of the upper castle, all in the shadow of a picturesque 57-meter sheer drop. Films, videos, and even video games have taken place here too.
7. Corvin Castle (Hunyadi Castle), Romania
One of the Seven Wonders of Romania, the enormous Gothic-Renaissance castle that is also called Corvin was built in 1446 in Hunedoara, Transylvania, by John Hunyadi, a powerful voivode (regional governor) and statesman who led Europe’s fight against Ottoman invasions.
Its exterior walls, with their narrow arrowslits, and interior double-walled design were intended to make it impervious to attack. Still, the compound’s crowning glory is its ensemble of spiky towers, courtyard carvings, and vaulted halls, along with some exquisite interior decorations. The fortress is now open as a museum between 9 am-5 pm daily.
8. Windsor Castle, United Kingdom
In addition to being the longest-occupied palace in Europe, Windsor Castle is the residence of the reigning British monarch, a position the castle has held for more than 1,000 years, starting in the 11th century, when William the Conqueror ordered its original construction.
It is still an official residence of the Royal Family. It incorporates magnificent examples of virtually every developmental stage in the history of architecture from its 1,020 years of operating history – from its ornate State Apartments and sumptuous Royal Chambers to its soaring cylindrical towers and Gothic edifice of St.
George’s Chapel. Windsor is the crown jewel of Britain’s regal splendor and monarchy. The Queen Elizabeth II favours Windsor as her weekend home away from London.
9. Spiš Castle, Slovakia
More than four centuries of ongoing archaeological excavation have yet to expose the beginnings of Spiš Castle: an enormous and mysterious medieval castle compound in eastern Slovakia which, centered on a large rock spur, contains an area of 41,426 square meters and dominates the outline of the town through a mass of towers, fortifications and inner palaces, many dating from the 12th century (the earliest recorded date is 1196) that was built to control regionally held territory for the Kingdom of Hungary.
In 1993, this monument complex became a protected UNESCO World Heritage Site, managed for conservation purposes by the Slovak National Museum. Tourists traversing the inner Upper and Lower Castles, huge Lower Yard defenses, and shady Upper Yard galleries are confronted by the sheer size and mysteries of Spiš Castle.
10. Swallow’s Nest, Crimea
The sparkling decorative Swallow’s Nest is a relatively modern architectural whimsy completed in 1912 for a Baltic German baron. In contrast to the massive fortified castles that proliferated in Western and Central Europe, this extravagant seaside retreat was created simply for romantic reasons atop a 40-metre-high Aurora Cliff overlooking the Black Sea near Yalta.
The Swiss-born Moscow architect Leonid Sherwood designed this intimate seaside castle like a decorative doll’s house more than an impregnable fortress: whimsical decorative wood carvings dominate the airspace instead of forbidding towers and ramparts.
The holiday spot’s coastal outlook and fairy tale aesthetic also helped the Swallow’s Nest to become a favorite photogenic mise en scène in Soviet films of the past half-century.
Regardless of which of these enchanting castles you view as most exceptional, each reflects the priceless treasure trove of architectural and cultural history our shared planet offers – from the romantic fantasy castle of Neuschwanstein that appears to have sprung from a fairytale or a child’s drawing book to the martial splendor of Romania’s Corvin Castle and its imposing yet elegant Bran Castle that look as though they were lifted from ancient history.
Whatever your ambition—to explore the grand royal apartments of Windsor Castle or to take a picnic to the Scottish island that is home to Eilean Donan—these relics of an era of castles offer a unique way of engaging with the legends, battles, politics, and luxuries of the ruling classes across Europe and beyond in the past millennium.
In this way, their long reconstruction can evoke in new generations, again and again, the joy that comes from entering a great castle for the first time, of looking upon its manmade mountains from within their cool, shadowed halls, and of learning stories about the people who built it thousands of years ago – people who were much like ourselves.
To step through the looking glass of time and experience, however briefly, the way our ancestors dreamed, fought, ruled, and lived: this, perhaps, is the most powerful sorcery of castles.