The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses in Europe

195 places in 35 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Schönbrunn Palace

   Schloss Schönbrunn

   Austria · 4.3 km from Vienna48.185° N 16.312° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   History settled deep into these rooms. Franz Joseph, who reigned for 68 years, was born here and died here in November 1916, two years before the monarchy fell. The palace then passed to the Austrian Republic and became a museum; after the Second World War it housed the British element of the Allied administration, and in 1961 it hosted the summit between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev.

   Did you know? The Gloriette's inscription gives its date, 1775, in an archaic Roman numeral notation, and its hall later served Franz Joseph as a breakfast room.

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2. 02 Castel Sant'Angelo

   Italy · 1.4 km from Rome41.903° N 12.466° E

   

   Its current name comes from a specific legend: in 590 CE, during a plague, Pope Gregory the Great is said to have seen the Archangel Michael appear on the summit sheathing his sword — read as a sign the epidemic was ending. A statue of the angel has stood on top ever since, and the building has cycled through duty as papal residence, state prison, and now museum, on top of its original job as a tomb.

   Did you know? When the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, looters scattered the imperial urns and their ashes.

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3. 03 Prague Castle

   Pražský hrad

   Czech Republic · 1.7 km from Prague50.090° N 14.400° E

   

   What makes it extraordinary is that it is not one building but a millennium of them. The Romanesque Basilica of St George, the oldest church still standing inside the walls, sits a few steps from St Vitus Cathedral, a Gothic project begun under Charles IV in the 14th century and only finished in 1929. The Old Royal Palace holds Vladislav Hall, the vast late-Gothic hall that master builder Benedikt Rejt raised for King Vladislaus II after 1485.

   Did you know? Golden Lane was built for Rudolf II's castle guards; Franz Kafka wrote in house No. 22, rented by his sister, from 1916 for about a year.

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4. 04 Tower of Hercules

   Torre de Hércules

   Spain · 6.3 km from A Coruña43.386° N 8.406° W

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   What's easy to miss standing in front of it is that you're looking at two buildings stacked on top of each other.

   Did you know? The 18th-century restoration was carried out by the naval engineer Eustaquio Giannini, and UNESCO later singled it out as exemplary for protecting the Roman core.

   More about Tower of Hercules →

5. 05 Diocletian's Palace

   Dioklecijanova palača

   Croatia · 2.9 km from Split43.508° N 16.438° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   What makes the palace unique is what happened next. When Salona was sacked in the 7th century, its refugees moved inside the walls, and they never left. Houses, churches and shops filled the courtyards and streets, and the palace became the core of Split. Today it still forms about half of the old town, with some 3,000 residents living inside it, and the medieval city is built into the Roman walls rather than beside them.

   Did you know? Julius Nepos, the last Western Roman emperor, was murdered in 480 at his villa near Salona, quite possibly this palace.

   More about Diocletian's Palace →

6. 06 Palace of Versailles

   Château de Versailles

   France · 1.1 km from Versailles48.805° N 2.120° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The centre of it all is the Hall of Mirrors, begun in 1678 on the site of a terrace facing the gardens. Its 578 mirrors face 17 tall windows, doubling the daylight, and Le Brun's ceiling tells the first 18 years of Louis XIV's personal rule in 30 painted scenes, most of them victories over the Dutch.

   Did you know? The gardens contain 55 fountains with 620 jets, fed by about 35 km of piping, and some 2,100 sculptures.

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7. 07 Spiš Castle

   Spišský hrad

   Slovakia · 34.5 km from Prešov49.001° N 20.768° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The castle grew outward in rings. A Romanesque stone core with a two-storey palace and a basilica was built by the thirteenth century. A second outer ward in the fourteenth century doubled its area, and in the fifteenth century the walls were raised and a third ward added. The Hungarian kings owned it until the late fifteenth century.

   Did you know? It was one of the few castles in the Kingdom of Hungary to withstand the Mongol invasion of 1241.

   More about Spiš Castle →

8. 08 Sanssouci Palace

   Schloss Sanssouci

   Germany · 2.2 km from Potsdam52.403° N 13.039° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Between 1750 and 1753, Voltaire lived here at Frederick's invitation, drawn into the king's habit of hosting philosophical "table talk" dinners that ran more like salons than state functions.

   Did you know? Frederick fell out with his architect Knobelsdorff in 1746 over where to place the palace, and the Dutch architect Jan Bouman finished the work.

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9. 09 Pointe du Hoc

   France49.398° N 0.989° W

   

   The Germans had placed a battery of six French-made 155 mm guns here, able to reach both Omaha and Utah beaches, and in spring 1944 began enclosing them in heavy casemates. Allied planners assigned the position to the US Army Rangers under Lieutenant Colonel James Earl Rudder.

   Did you know? Shortly before D-Day, Rudder relieved the officer first chosen to lead the assault, Major Cleveland Lytle, and went ashore with the Rangers himself.

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10. 10 Rock of Cashel

    Ireland52.520° N 7.890° W

    

    Long before the churches, this was a seat of power: the kings of Munster ruled from Cashel from early times, and Brian Boru was crowned here in 977. Local tradition gives the rock a more colourful origin — it is said to be a mouthful of stone spat out by the Devil when Saint Patrick drove him from a gap in the mountains to the north, the Devil's Bit, and Patrick himself is said to have converted the King of Munster here in the fifth century.

    Did you know? The round tower's doorway sits about 3.7 metres above the ground, yet its foundation is only around a metre deep.

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11. 11 Torre del Oro

    Spain · 2.9 km from Seville37.382° N 5.996° W

    

    The tower grew in layers, and it is easy to read them from the riverbank. Above the Almohad drum sits a narrower twelve-sided stage generally attributed to the time of Peter I of Castile in the 14th century; on top is a small cylindrical lantern with a dome of golden tiles, added in 1760 by the military engineer Sebastian van der Borcht, architect of the Royal Tobacco Factory, after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 had badly damaged the upper part.

    Did you know? The naval museum opened on 24 June 1944 under Captain Julio Guillén Tato; its collection grew from 143 items in 1947 to 425 by 1992.

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12. 12 Holstentor

    Germany · 0.8 km from Lübeck53.866° N 10.680° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The gate shows two faces. The city side is flat, generous with windows and bears the inscription SPQL, a Lübeck version of Rome's SPQR added in 1871. 5 metres thick against less than one on the town side, and they are pierced by gun ports and slits for small arms. Above the arch, the inscription "concordia domi foris pax", harmony within, peace outside, abbreviates a motto from a vanished Renaissance foregate.

    Did you know? The gate appeared on West German postage stamps in 1948 and 2000, and its field side was engraved on the 50-mark banknote from 1960 to 1991.

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13. 13 Quinta da Regaleira

    Portugal · 23.1 km from Lisbon38.796° N 9.396° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The palace itself is a vertical fantasy of pinnacles, gargoyles, carved capitals and a slim octagonal tower, fronted by a loggia whose stone columns shelter tiled scenes of a royal hunt. Inside, five floors run from the servants' quarters and kitchen, with its food lift, to Monteiro's study; one room is lined with portraits of the kings of Portugal.

    Did you know? The underground passages are lined with rough limestone brought from the coast near Peniche, chosen to make the tunnels feel like a submerged world.

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14. 14 Wawel Castle

    Zamek Królewski na Wawelu

    Poland · 1.8 km from Kraków50.054° N 19.937° E

    

    The hill was fortified early; stone churches and halls appeared here in the 10th and 11th centuries, when Kraków became a ducal and then royal seat. Casimir III the Great built a Gothic castle around a courtyard in the 14th century, and Władysław Jagiełło and Queen Jadwiga added towers such as the Hen's Foot.

    Did you know? The Hen's Foot Tower takes its name from the three projecting buttresses at its base, which resemble the foot of a chicken.

    More about Wawel Castle →

15. 15 Alhambra

    Spain · 1.3 km from Granada37.176° N 3.588° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Almost nothing in the palace decoration is there by accident. The Court of the Lions, its twelve stone lions supporting a fountain at the intersection of four channels, is a literal architectural translation of the Quranic description of paradise as a garden fed by four rivers — the geometry is theology, not just design.

    Did you know? Some poems carved in the Palace of the Lions are written in the first person, as if the room itself were addressing the visitor.

    More about Alhambra →

16. 16 Trakai Island Castle

    Lithuania · 25 km from Vilnius54.653° N 24.933° E

    

    Grand Duke Kęstutis began building in stone in the second half of the 14th century and moved his residence and treasury here; the works were largely finished around 1409 under his son Vytautas the Great, who died in the castle in 1430. The builders used Gothic red brick over stone footings.

    Did you know? The Flemish traveller Guillebert de Lannoy described the castle in 1414.

    More about Trakai Island Castle →

17. 17 Spinalonga

    Σπιναλόγκα

    Greece · 34.5 km from Sitia35.297° N 25.738° E

    

    The Venetians, who ruled Crete, fortified the island from 1579 on plans drawn up by the engineer Genese Bressani to guard the harbour of Elounda. By 1584 it was armed with 35 cannon and counted among the strongest sea forts in the Mediterranean. It held out long after the rest of Crete fell to the Ottomans, and was handed over only in 1715.

    Did you know? The patients' brotherhood brought electricity, a café with a donated gramophone and a cinema to the island, and it also banned mirrors.

    More about Spinalonga →

18. 18 Castel del Monte

    Italy · 26.1 km from Barletta41.085° N 16.271° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Why Frederick wanted an octagon is still argued over. It may echo the Dome of the Rock, which he saw on crusade, or Charlemagne's octagonal chapel at Aachen; some read it as a figure halfway between the square of the earth and the circle of the sky. There is no moat and no drawbridge, and it was once dismissed as a hunting lodge, although archaeologists now think it had a curtain wall and served as a citadel.

    Did you know? The shorter name Castel del Monte first appears in a 1463 decree of the Aragonese king Ferdinand I of Naples.

    More about Castel del Monte →

19. 19 Lichtenstein Castle

    Schloss Lichtenstein

    Germany48.407° N 9.258° E

    

    The castle was designed by Carl Alexander Heideloff and built in 1840–1842 on the foundations of a late-medieval castle of 1390, itself a successor to an older fortress whose ruins lie about 500 metres away. The site is dramatic: about 817 metres above sea level and some 250 metres above the Echaz.

    Did you know? Although Carl Alexander Heideloff drew up the design, the building work on site was supervised by Johann Georg Rupp.

    More about Lichtenstein Castle →

20. 20 Tower of London

    United Kingdom · 3 km from London51.508° N 0.076° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Around the keep, later kings wrapped two concentric rings of walls and a moat. Richard I doubled the enclosure, Henry III added the north and east walls with their towers, and Edward I completed the outer ward in 1285, fixing the plan that survives today.

    Did you know? In 1671 Colonel Thomas Blood bound the Jewel House keeper and seized the crown, sceptre and orb, foiled only when the keeper's son arrived.

    More about Tower of London →

21. 21 Fort Saint Elmo

    Forti Sant'Iermu

    Malta · 0.4 km from Valletta35.902° N 14.519° E

    

    The point was watched from the early 15th century, and the Aragonese raised a watchtower here in 1488, dedicated to Saint Elmo (Erasmus of Formia). After an Ottoman fleet sailed unopposed into Marsamxett in 1551, the Knights of St John replaced the tower from 1552 with a proper star fort designed by the Spanish engineer Pietro Pardo.

    Did you know? In the 1941 Italian attack an explosive boat struck the bridge linking the breakwater to the point, bringing it down; a new bridge was built only in 2012.

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22. 22 Tsarevets

    Царевец

    Bulgaria · 0.4 km from Veliko Tarnovo43.083° N 25.653° E

    

    6 metres thick girdled the whole hill, and the main western gate was reached across a drawbridge on a narrow rock neck, followed by two further gates deeper inside. At the centre lay a walled palace compound of almost 4,900 square metres with a throne hall, a court church and royal apartments.

    Did you know? The Sound and Light show began in 1985 for the 800th anniversary of the uprising of Asen and Peter, created by a Bulgarian-Czechoslovak team.

    More about Tsarevets →

23. 23 Nesvizh Castle

    Нясвіжскі палацава-паркавы комплекс

    Belarus53.223° N 26.692° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Radziwiłłs held Nesvizh from 1533. In 1582 Mikołaj Krzysztof Radziwiłł, nicknamed "the Orphan", began replacing the old fortress with a square three-storey palace, finished by 1604, whose corners were defended by octagonal towers; for a time the state archive of the Grand Duchy, the Lithuanian Metrica, was kept here.

    Did you know? In 1772 Russian troops carried off the Radziwiłł library of some 20,000 books to St Petersburg, where it stayed in the Academy of Sciences.

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24. 24 Town Hall of Bremen

    Bremer Rathaus

    Germany · 0.7 km from Bremen53.076° N 8.808° E

    

    The building was a political statement from the start. The city council placed it on the market square so that the square, until then dominated by the cathedral and the archbishop's palace, would now be dominated by the burghers; its two great halls were even made slightly longer and wider than the hall of the archbishop's palace. Sixteen large statues of emperors and prince-electors on the walls proclaimed Bremen's claim to be an imperial city.

    Did you know? Before the great Renaissance makeover, the ten pointed windows of the upper hall had already been squared off in 1595–96.

    More about Town Hall of Bremen →

25. 25 Český Krumlov Castle

    Český Krumlov

    Czech Republic · 21.4 km from České Budějovice48.813° N 14.315° E

    

    The theatre is what sets Krumlov apart from other great Central European residences. It was first built in wood in 1680–1682 under Johann Christian I of Eggenberg and refitted with new stage machinery in 1765–1766 under Joseph Adam of Schwarzenberg. It survives with its auditorium, deep stage and the original wooden machinery for fast scene changes, and it counts among the best-preserved Baroque theatres in the world.

    Did you know? Covering more than six hectares, the complex was the third most visited castle in the Czech Republic in 2014.

    More about Český Krumlov Castle →

26. 26 Belém Tower

    Torre de Belém

    Portugal · 7 km from Lisbon38.691° N 9.216° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Its architect, Francisco de Arruda, had built Portuguese fortresses in Morocco, and the tower mixes military purpose with the exuberant ornament of the Manueline style. Carved stone ropes and knots, armillary spheres and the crosses of the Order of Christ cover the limestone, while the domed watchtowers and balconies show Moorish influence.

    Did you know? Work began around 1514 and was finished in 1519, just two years before the death of King Manuel I, who commissioned it.

    More about Belém Tower →

27. 27 Vianden Castle

    Luxembourg · 6.3 km from Diekirch49.935° N 6.203° E

    

    The castle's survival is a story of rescue. In 1820 King William I of the Netherlands sold it to a local alderman, who stripped it and sold off the roof tiles, panelling, doors, windows, beams and lead. Public anger led the king to buy back the ruin in 1827, but little was done for decades. Prince Henry of the Netherlands re-roofed the chapel in 1851.

    Did you know? A fire started by lightning in 1667 destroyed the chapel's original Gothic look, which was only restored with a new roof in 1979.

    More about Vianden Castle →

28. 28 Hospital de Sant Pau

    Hospital de la Santa Cruz y San Pablo

    Spain · 3.1 km from Barcelona41.413° N 2.174° E

    

    The institution itself is far older. The Hospital de la Santa Creu was founded in 1401 by merging six small medieval hospitals, and its Gothic buildings in the old city now house the National Library of Catalonia. By the late nineteenth century they were overcrowded, and the bequest of Pau Gil, a Barcelona-born banker based in Paris who left part of his fortune for a new hospital dedicated to Saint Paul, made the move possible.

    Did you know? Men's pavilions on the east side are named after male saints, while the women's pavilions on the west bear the names of female saints or titles of the Virgin.

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29. 29 Palamidi

    Παλαμήδι

    Greece · 38 km from Tripoli37.562° N 22.804° E

    

    The Venetians barely had time to use it. In 1715 the Ottomans took the fortress, and they held it until the Greek War of Independence, when Greek fighters captured it on 30 November 1822 during the siege of Nafplio.

    Did you know? The Greek assault of 30 November 1822 was carried out by around 300 men, with the revolutionary leader Staikos Staikopoulos among them.

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30. 30 Neuschwanstein Castle

    Schloss Neuschwanstein

    Germany47.557° N 10.749° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Underneath the turrets it was surprisingly modern for its decade: running water on every floor, forced-air central heating, and telephone lines connecting rooms — comforts most contemporary castles in Europe didn't have, hidden behind walls designed to look centuries older.

    Did you know? Building cost about 6.2 million gold marks in the king's lifetime, nearly double the original estimate of 3.2 million.

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