Thecastlemap.com is one of the websites I operate. I also operate trainrouter.com, sunshineatlas.com. and europebeachmap.com.
Honestly, I did not want to focus too much on this website due to what I thought of a market of low demand. However, there are so many critical comments. Hence, I will fix it properly and this will be one of the websites I will fully commit to.
I appreciate everything guys even if you probably do not like the website. The reason why I made the website is because I reallly like castles....
- Arad fortress (similar to Alba Iulia, but less well known, currently a military base): https://maps.app.goo.gl/a2Dw3W2CKCpU7cJA7
- Oradea fortress (same as above, but open to the public): https://maps.app.goo.gl/a2Dw3W2CKCpU7cJA7
- Târgu Mureș fortress (slightly smaller than the ones above, but also notable): https://maps.app.goo.gl/qcwSFL9hGqoCZXWv7
- plus lots of villages and smaller towns in Transylvania also have fortresses or fortified churches: Biertan https://maps.app.goo.gl/VVMkpaFbf7HJjbPQA, Râșnov https://maps.app.goo.gl/1LnB5h2sTj1WRmTk7, Saschiz https://maps.app.goo.gl/Yb5dDz38xXyy8JEZ7, Viscri https://maps.app.goo.gl/318uMB1fEvpqXSzi7, Rupea https://maps.app.goo.gl/6hTM8PtkQhQxXcyG8
I am slowly but surely fixing based from the feedback I get here om Hacker News.
I am citing the users on the changelog a way to show my thanks: https://thecastlemap.com/changelog/
I am going outside to stay out in the sun for a bit now:)
It sucks that I cannot properly communicate because feedback is spread on the internet, which is making it really hard to address them.
Therefore I will put my X account here for those who are interested: https://x.com/Flightmussy
Just went to check a few randomly and saw the map lacks the Citadel of Acre, which is really quite impressive https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g297736-d324... (It's in Akko, northern Israel)
hope that will help you find and fix some other misses in your dataset.
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.
Somebody suggested in other comments that the data could be from OpenStreetMap. Or let people add their own castles, but then you have all the sort of problems of content moderation.
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)
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.
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!)
Side question: why does Claude prefer dark backgrounds with low-contrast text?
>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.
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.
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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!
You could add the facility for visitors to add their own locations or submit them for review. That way the people who "know something is missing" can add it themselves.
> 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
When you tap a marker often you can’t see the castle in the photo because it’s cropped to fit a rectangle with an unusual aspect ratio. That element should be allowed to adjust its height so the image is scaled at its own aspect ratio rather than cropped. Eg you can only see the mounds of Berwick Castle and Bamburgh Castle in the North East of England.
Also this one should be included: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caisteal_Maol
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).
I have only used English Wikipedia for putting castles on the map. To some degrees using Wikipedia of other languages will fix the problem partially (Which some of you have suggested). The ultimate fix would be a community who does all the suggestions, because all datasets are wrong anyways.
The claim that France does have 45k castles is just so wrong lol. Yes the site does miss many castles and some are defined wrong. I am working on that and I am really thankful for all the suggestions which will be credited in the changelog: https://thecastlemap.com/changelog/
Anyways I am working on the site and updating it rather quickly because I never thought people wanted a castle site.
Looking at Tokyo, Japan, I see that Hama-rikyū Gardens is included. Wiki says:
> The main palace at Hama was destroyed by fire in 1724, and has not been rebuilt since.
As I understand, it is a beautiful garden, not a castle.
The real value and work would be someone actually compiling and creating a high-quality castle dataset, in which case anyone could vibe-code a similar frontend to it.
Potentially a agent (swarm) could do this, if properly integrated into OSM, wikis, libraries, photographs etc. But it wouldn't be quick and would still benefit from a human-in-the-loop verifying each entry.
Brazil also has a few castles, although not sure if they are classified differently -- https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_castelos_no_Brasil
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!
Apparently Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, etc... were not really into castles, while Japan was?
I wonder if it's only scraping english language Wikipedia articles?
The Acropolis, in Athens. There's no more famous castle than that. Or fortress, whatever you want to call it.
I get that this is vibe coded but I really wonder how the data was compiled. This will take serious effort to fix if it's so deficient it doesn't include the most famous castle of all. And I don't mean it will take iterating the vibe coding, this needs serious knowledge work that I don't think an LLM is sufficient for, sorry.
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q63495355
EDIT: ah, it's only those with an english wikipedia page, nevermind
If you want to leave a legacy, build something out of stone.
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.
I checked my local area, and it omits interesting castles, instead including palaces, landmarks and world war era fortresses.
Shameful submission.
Plymouth is surrounded by them.
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.
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
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.
But the links don't work.
(firefox mobile)
Although there are plenty of old coastal fortifications, which don't appear to count even though things like Fort Siloso in Singapore (a WW2 vintage concrete bunker) apparently do.
Even more ridiculous : Bastille also reported as "renowned ruin". Nothing remains. All stones have disappeared centuries ago.
it's on the 1¢ coins here!!
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"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.
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Its fine if its not exhaustive list. All major I could think of in few european countries I could find with all info correctly. Thank you for this effort, much appreciated.
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.
It's a nice idea, but the range seems extremely broad on the one hand but very incomplete on the other hand.
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.
I love this project, like you I'm a big castle fan and tourist.
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.
But we're also very starved for true "Medieval Castles" like Europe or east Asia, so we take what we can get!
Bran Castle: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q390275
Citadel Hill: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q321867
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.
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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.
The Māori built thousands of hilltop fortifications with wooden palisades (Pā), but lacking metal tools they didn’t build with stone.
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.
why do all the vibecoded slopsites have the same design? i feel icky when i visit one like eternal sunshine of the spotless vibe
The Acropolis of Athens (Ancient Greek: ἡ Ἀκρόπολις τῶν Ἀθηνῶν, romanized: hē Akropolis tōn Athēnōn; Modern Greek: Ακρόπολη Αθηνών, romanized: Akrópoli Athinón) is an ancient citadel located on a rocky outcrop above the city of Athens, Greece, and contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historical significance, the most famous being the Parthenon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acropolis_of_Athens
In fact, that's what "acropolis" (small a) means: it's Greek for "citadel".
And what is a "citadel"?
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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.
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Now Disney's Sleeping Beauty castle is itself over 70 years old, making it arguably just as much a historical 'castle' as Neuschwanstein.
For example just by looking from my eye you are missing Lamu Castle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamu_Fort Siyu Fort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siyu Thimlich Ohingahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thimlich_Ohinga
And then in Tanzania you have the Gerezani Fort in Kilwa Kisiwani, the Old Fort of Zanzibar, the German Fort in Bagamoyo. And then Taleh Fort in Somalia.
I have not even started on either Mozambique, or Angola.
Also, if you talk on some mid level (say B1, which takes a LOT of effort for french language), you are not going to get laughed at and ridiculed when using it in UK/US/Australia/NZ etc with english. A very common experience in France when trying to use french (I go there every other weekend, its just across the border). Folks from other parts of former french empire like quebecois or corsicans are much more approachable in this and tolerant. Suffice to say their language variant is often mocked by mainland french too, I think personally parisians are the most cocky ones.
un chapeau, des chapeaux -> one hat, hats
I would say it’s technical debt but rest assured that the language is alive and will eventually drop the x. Perhaps we will have a s instead of a x first.
(at least when it comes to languages based on the Latin script)