The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses Seen on Screen in the World

40 places in 19 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

   

   Schönbrunn was the summer residence of the Habsburgs, and it grew from a hunting ground. Emperor Maximilian II bought the floodplain of the Wien river in 1569 and stocked it with game; Eleonora Gonzaga added a palace in the 1640s, and the name, from a "beautiful spring" whose water was drunk at court, first appears in 1642.

   Did you know? In 1786 the Orangery hosted an imperial musical duel: Mozart's Der Schauspieldirektor and Salieri's Prima la musica e poi le parole were performed at opposite ends of the hall.

   More about Schönbrunn Palace →

2. 02 Krak des Chevaliers

   Syria · 38.9 km from Homs34.757° N 36.295° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Krak des Chevaliers sits on a 650-metre spur at the southern end of Syria's coastal mountains, watching over the Homs Gap, the one easy corridor between the port of Tripoli and the inland city of Homs. The site was already fortified in 1031, when the Mirdasid emir of Aleppo stationed Kurdish troops here, which is why Arabic sources still call it Hisn al-Akrad, the fort of the Kurds.

   Did you know? T. E. Lawrence judged it possibly the best-preserved and most admirable castle anywhere in the world.

   More about Krak des Chevaliers →

3. 03 Palace of Versailles

   Château de Versailles

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

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Versailles began as a small brick-and-stone hunting lodge that Louis XIII built in 1623 amid marshes southwest of Paris, a building contemporaries mocked as a house of cards. His son turned it into the stage set of absolute monarchy.

   Did you know? Water was too scarce to run every fountain at once, so fountaineers whistled to each other as the king approached and shut each one off after he passed.

   More about Palace of Versailles →

4. 04 Sanssouci Palace

   Schloss Sanssouci

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

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The name is the whole design brief: "sans souci," without a care, and Frederick the Great built exactly that — a single-storey retreat on a terraced vineyard hillside outside Potsdam, deliberately smaller and more intimate than the Baroque grandeur of Versailles it's often compared to.

   Did you know? The fountains Frederick planned for his gardens never worked in his lifetime; even with calculations by the mathematician Euler, the pumps failed and the project was abandoned in 1780.

   More about Sanssouci Palace →

5. 05 Forbidden City

   People's Republic of China · 1.6 km from Beijing39.916° N 116.391° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   For almost five centuries the Forbidden City was the physical centre of the Chinese state. The Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty began it in 1406, after moving the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, and the complex was ready by 1420; from then until 1912 twenty-four emperors, fourteen Ming and ten Qing, lived and ruled here.

   Did you know? The Last Emperor of 1987 was the first feature film the People's Republic of China ever allowed to be shot inside the palace.

   More about Forbidden City →

6. 06 Trakai Island Castle

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

   

   Few castles make their setting do so much of the work. Trakai's red-brick fortress fills most of an island in Lake Galvė, a lake with 21 islands in the lake country west of Vilnius, and it is reached on foot over a footbridge. For Lithuanians it is the most tangible image of the medieval Grand Duchy, when Trakai was one of the main centres of the state.

   Did you know? The keep of the ducal palace rises about 35 metres, roughly six storeys, above the island.

   More about Trakai Island Castle →

7. 07 Vianden Castle

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

   

   Vianden Castle stands on a rock spur high above the Our valley and the small town of Vianden in the north of Luxembourg. It is one of the largest fortified castles west of the Rhine. A Roman fort and an early medieval refuge stood here first. The first stone castle, a watchtower inside an oval wall, went up around 1000.

   Did you know? Vianden castle served as a filming location for the 2000 film Shadow of the Vampire.

   More about Vianden Castle →

8. 08 Neuschwanstein Castle

   Schloss Neuschwanstein

   Germany47.557° N 10.749° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The name suggests a medieval stronghold; the building is closer to a 19th-century stage set with plumbing. Ludwig II commissioned it in 1868, right after the Austro-Prussian War had stripped Bavaria of real independence and left him a king with a crown but shrinking power — and what he built instead of political influence was a retreat modelled on the operas of Richard Wagner, whom he'd idolised since adolescence.

   Did you know? Ludwig II spent only 172 days in the palace he had dreamed of, and it was called New Hohenschwangau until after his death.

   More about Neuschwanstein Castle →

9. 09 Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg

   France48.249° N 7.344° E

   

   Haut-Koenigsbourg stands on a sandstone spur at 757 metres in the Vosges, above the Alsace plain, and on a clear day it can be seen from as far away as Colmar. The rock was first recorded under Charlemagne. By 1147 the Hohenstaufen dukes of Swabia had a castle here, built without permission on land that belonged to the abbey of Saint-Denis, and by the 1190s it was called Königsburg, the "King's Castle".

   Did you know? Hayao Miyazaki's 2004 animated film Howl's Moving Castle drew inspiration from Haut-Koenigsbourg.

   More about Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg →

10. 10 Miramare Castle

    Castello di Miramare

    Italy · 7.7 km from Trieste45.702° N 13.712° E

    

    Miramare is the house of a man who wanted to be a sailor and ended as an emperor in front of a firing squad. Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, younger brother of Franz Joseph of Austria and from 1854 commander of the Imperial Navy, chose a bare limestone spur on the Gulf of Trieste for his home; local tradition says he found it while sheltering from a storm in the little harbour of Grignano.

    Did you know? In the castle's great hall on 10 April 1864 Maximilian formally accepted the crown of Mexico from a delegation of Mexican notables.

    More about Miramare Castle →

11. 11 Château de Vincennes

    France · 6.3 km from Paris48.843° N 2.436° E

    

    The Château de Vincennes holds the tallest medieval keep in Europe, and its walls enclose seven centuries of French history on the eastern edge of Paris. Louis VII founded a royal hunting residence in the forest here in 1178, and Saint Louis used it often; he said farewell to his family at Vincennes before leaving on the crusade from which he did not return.

    More about Château de Vincennes →

12. 12 Topkapı Palace

    Turkey · 1 km from Istanbul41.013° N 28.984° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    For almost four centuries the Ottoman Empire was governed from a headland at the very tip of old Istanbul. Mehmed II began Topkapı Palace in 1459, a few years after taking Constantinople, on Seraglio Point, where the Golden Horn opens into the Bosphorus and both meet the Sea of Marmara.

    Did you know? The palace stands on the site of the acropolis of ancient Byzantion, and parts of its outer walls date back to Byzantine times.

    More about Topkapı Palace →

13. 13 Hluboká Castle

    Zámek Hluboká nad Vltavou

    Czech Republic · 8 km from České Budějovice49.051° N 14.442° E

    

    Rising above the woods and the Vltava valley north of České Budějovice, Hluboká looks less like a Bohemian castle than a piece of Victorian England set down in South Bohemia. The rock has been fortified since the second half of the thirteenth century, when a Gothic royal castle stood here, and it was rebuilt several times for its later lords before the Schwarzenberg family acquired it in 1661.

    Did you know? The castle has served as a film location, including for Shanghai Knights and as the Eastern Coven in Underworld: Blood Wars.

    More about Hluboká Castle →

14. 14 Hampton Court Palace

    United Kingdom · 18.8 km from London51.403° N 0.337° W

    

    Hampton Court is two palaces in one: a red-brick Tudor palace of turreted gatehouses, twisted chimneys and a great hall, and, grafted onto it, a Baroque palace by Sir Christopher Wren built to answer Versailles. Set beside the Thames about 19 km south-west of central London, it was begun in 1514 by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Henry VIII's chief minister, who meant it to be the finest house in England.

    Did you know? Henry VIII was so impatient for his Great Hall that the masons were made to work through the night by candlelight.

    More about Hampton Court Palace →

15. 15 Malbork Castle

    Zamek w Malborku

    Poland · 27.7 km from Elbląg54.040° N 19.028° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Teutonic Knights began building at Malbork around 1274, but the decision to make it their capital came in 1309, after they lost their last footholds in the eastern Mediterranean and needed a new centre of gravity entirely inside their own conquered territory in Prussia.

    Did you know? Measured by land area, Malbork is the largest castle in the world: its outer walls enclose about 21 hectares, four times the area of Windsor Castle.

    More about Malbork Castle →

16. 16 Kroměříž Castle

    Czech Republic · 20.3 km from Zlín49.300° N 17.393° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    For centuries the small Moravian town of Kroměříž was the summer seat of the bishops — from 1777 archbishops — of Olomouc, and their residence here, together with two very different gardens, was listed as a World Heritage Site in 1998. UNESCO's reasoning is candid: the palace is a fine but typical princely residence; what is rare is the Baroque garden layout that survives around it almost intact.

    More about Kroměříž Castle →

17. 17 Hohenzollern Castle

    Burg Hohenzollern

    Germany48.324° N 8.967° E

    

    By the time Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm visited the hilltop in 1819, the medieval and early-modern castles that had stood there were mostly gone — only the chapel had really survived intact.

    Did you know? From 1952 to 1991 the coffins of the Prussian kings Frederick William I and Frederick the Great rested in the castle chapel, returning to Potsdam only after German reunification.

    More about Hohenzollern Castle →

18. 18 Palace of Fontainebleau

    Château de Fontainebleau

    France · 14.8 km from Melun48.402° N 2.701° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Fontainebleau is the palace where French kings lived for eight centuries, and it shows every one of them. It began as a hunting lodge in the forest, recorded under Louis VII in 1137, and nearly every ruler afterwards added a wing, a courtyard or a staircase, so that the buildings sprawl across several courts in a mix of styles that no single plan ever tidied up.

    Did you know? Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, consecrated the chapel of the royal castle here in 1169.

    More about Palace of Fontainebleau →

19. 19 Windsor Castle

    United Kingdom · 26.1 km from Reading51.484° N 0.604° W

    

    Windsor Castle has been a royal residence for more than nine centuries, which makes it the longest-occupied palace in Europe and the largest castle in the world that is still lived in. Its plan is the one William the Conqueror laid down in the decade after 1066: a motte-and-bailey castle with its wards gathered around a central mound, on a ridge above the Thames.

    Did you know? Edward III spent £51,000 rebuilding Windsor between 1350 and 1377, the largest sum any medieval English king spent on a single building project.

    More about Windsor Castle →

20. 20 Bran Castle

    Castelul Bran

    Romania · 23.8 km from Brașov45.515° N 25.367° E

    

    Bran Castle sits on a rock at the mouth of the Bran pass, the route that for centuries linked Transylvania with Wallachia over the Carpathians, and its whole history follows from that position. The first secure date is 19 November 1377, when King Louis I of Hungary granted the Saxons of Kronstadt, today's Brașov, the right to build a stone castle here at their own cost and with their own labour.

    Did you know? Queen Marie's heart, sealed in a golden casket, was brought to Bran in 1940 from her Black Sea palace, and her daughter Ileana built a chapel for it.

    More about Bran Castle →

21. 21 Suomenlinna

    Finland · 3.7 km from Helsinki60.144° N 24.984° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Suomenlinna is a sea fortress spread across eight islands at the mouth of Helsinki's harbour, six of them fortified, and it is still a lived-in neighbourhood of the city, with about 900 permanent residents. Sweden began building it in 1748, when Finland was part of the Swedish realm, as a naval base and bulwark against a Russia that had grown into a Baltic power after the founding of St Petersburg.

    Did you know? The name Suomenlinna became official on 12 May 1918, when a red-and-yellow lion flag was raised over Kustaanmiekka to an eight-shot salute.

    More about Suomenlinna →

22. 22 Karlštejn Castle

    Karlštejn

    Czech Republic · 23.5 km from Prague49.940° N 14.188° E

    

    Karlštejn rises in tiers above a wooded valley of the Berounka, its walls and towers stepping up the rock from the imperial palace to the Marian Tower and finally to the massive Great Tower at the summit.

    Did you know? The Chapel of the Holy Cross was sealed behind four sets of plated doors with nine locks, with a room above it for a special guard.

    More about Karlštejn Castle →

23. 23 Orava Castle

    Oravský hrad

    Slovakia49.262° N 19.358° E

    

    Orava Castle seems to grow straight out of its rock. The buildings climb a narrow cliff in three tiers, with the highest point 112 metres above the Orava river and the village of Oravský Podzámok in northern Slovakia. A fortified site already existed on the rock.

    Did you know? Besides Nosferatu, the castle appeared in the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and in the 2000 film Dragonheart: A New Beginning.

    More about Orava Castle →

24. 24 Bodiam Castle

    United Kingdom51.002° N 0.544° E

    

    Bodiam Castle is what many people picture when they think of a medieval castle: a square of sandstone walls with round towers at the corners, battlements, a twin-towered gatehouse, all reflected in a wide moat. The historian Charles Coulson called it the popular ideal of a medieval castle, and the military historian Cathcart King called it the most complete surviving example of a quadrangular castle in England.

    Did you know? The castle's 28 latrines emptied straight into the moat, which one archaeologist has described as effectively an open sewer.

    More about Bodiam Castle →

25. 25 Bojnice Castle

    Bojnický zámok

    Slovakia48.780° N 18.578° E

    

    Bojnice Castle in central Slovakia looks like a fairy-tale illustration dropped onto a Carpathian hillside: a cluster of steep pointed roofs, turrets, battlements and a tall central tower rising above the treetops at the edge of the spa town of Bojnice. It is in fact a very old castle wearing a nineteenth-century costume.

    Did you know? The castle served as a filming location for the Italian fantasy series Fantaghirò.

    More about Bojnice Castle →

26. 26 Herrenchiemsee Palace

    Neues Schloss Herrenchiemsee

    Germany · 20.2 km from Rosenheim47.860° N 12.402° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    On an island in the Chiemsee in southern Bavaria, King Ludwig II of Bavaria tried to build his own Versailles.

    Did you know? About 16.6 million marks were spent on Herrenchiemsee, more than Linderhof and Neuschwanstein together, pushing the royal finances close to bankruptcy.

    More about Herrenchiemsee Palace →

27. 27 Kremlin

    Russia · 0.4 km from Moscow55.752° N 37.618° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Moscow Kremlin is a walled citadel on Borovitsky Hill, where the Neglinnaya once flowed into the Moskva River. It has been the seat of Russian power, with interruptions, for most of the last seven centuries. A timber fort stood here in the 12th century. Ivan I rebuilt it in oak in 1339, and Dmitry Donskoy replaced that with white limestone in the 1360s.

    Did you know? The 202-tonne Tsar Bell has never rung: water thrown on it during a 1737 fire cracked it and broke off a slab weighing over 10 tonnes.

    More about Kremlin →

28. 28 Château de Blois

    France47.586° N 1.331° E

    

    The Château de Blois is four centuries of French architecture arranged around a single courtyard. Standing in the middle, one can turn from a thirteenth-century hall to a late-Gothic wing of red brick and grey stone, then to an exuberant Renaissance façade and finally to a severe classical front — each built by a different master of the house as royal taste changed.

    More about Château de Blois →

29. 29 Jaisalmer Fort

    India26.913° N 70.913° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Jaisalmer Fort is one of the very few living forts in the world. Roughly a quarter of the old city's population still lives inside its walls, some 4,000 people, many descended from the Brahmin and Rajput families who once served the Bhati rulers and earned the right to live on the hilltop.

    Did you know? The fort's Jain library holds the earliest known painted palm-leaf manuscript, a copy of the Oghaniryukti dated 1060.

    More about Jaisalmer Fort →

30. 30 Kronborg Castle

    Kronborg

    Denmark · 6.3 km from Helsingborg56.039° N 12.622° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Kronborg sits on a spit of land at the very north-eastern tip of Zealand, where the Øresund narrows to about 4 km and Sweden is plainly visible across the water. Whoever held this point could watch every ship entering or leaving the Baltic, and for four centuries Danish kings did exactly that, charging the Sound Dues on each cargo.

    Did you know? Frederick II's tapestry series once ran to forty pieces portraying a hundred Danish kings; only fourteen survive, half of them at the castle.

    More about Kronborg Castle →