The Most Beautiful Castles Seen on Screen in Europe

25 places in 13 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 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 →

2. 02 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 →

3. 03 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 →

4. 04 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 →

5. 05 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.

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6. 06 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 →

7. 07 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 →

8. 08 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 →

9. 09 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 →

10. 10 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 →

11. 11 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 →

12. 12 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 →

13. 13 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 →

14. 14 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 →

15. 15 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 →

16. 16 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 →

17. 17 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 →

18. 18 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 →

19. 19 Olavinlinna Castle

    Finland · 1 km from Savonlinna61.864° N 28.901° E

    

    Olavinlinna rises straight out of the water. Its grey stone walls and round towers fill a small rocky island in the Kyrönsalmi strait, where the lakes Haukivesi and Pihlajavesi meet in the heart of the Finnish lake district, so that the fortress seems to float on the current. It is the northernmost medieval stone castle still standing and the best preserved of all the medieval castles of the old Swedish realm.

    Did you know? The rocky islet was chosen partly because the fast current through the Kyrönsalmi strait keeps the water around it from freezing in winter.

    More about Olavinlinna Castle →

20. 20 Alcazaba of Almería

    Spain · 3.9 km from Almería36.841° N 2.472° W

    

    The Alcazaba of Almería spreads along a ridge above the old town and the harbour, a chain of walled enclosures that is one of the largest Moorish citadels in Spain. Its walls, more than three metres thick, are tied into longer lines of defences that run across the ravine of La Hoya to the hill of San Cristóbal, so that citadel, ravine and hill form a single fortified landscape.

    Did you know? More than 30 films and TV productions have been shot at or around the fortress since Cleopatra in 1963, among them Patton and Conan the Barbarian.

    More about Alcazaba of Almería →

21. 21 Château de Chenonceau

    France · 28.7 km from Tours47.325° N 1.071° E

    

    Chenonceau does something no other French château does: it walks across a river. Its main body stands on the piers of an old mill in the Cher, and from it a long gallery runs on arches all the way to the far bank, so that the building is mirrored in the water on both sides.

    Did you know? The medieval castle of the Marques family had four round towers whose bases stood in the water of the moat.

    More about Château de Chenonceau →

22. 22 Loarre Castle

    Castillo de Loarre

    Spain42.326° N 0.612° W

    

    Loarre is often called the best-preserved Romanesque castle in Europe, and standing below it you understand why the claim sticks. Its walls and towers rise straight out of a limestone spur where the Pre-Pyrenees drop to the plain of the Hoya de Huesca, and the rock itself serves as the foundation, which made the walls impossible to undermine.

    Did you know? Villagers from Loarre appeared as extras when Kingdom of Heaven was filmed here, and the castle also serves as a prison in the TV series El Ministerio del Tiempo.

    More about Loarre Castle →

23. 23 Royal Alcázar of Seville

    Spain · 2.5 km from Seville37.384° N 5.991° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Royal Alcázar of Seville is a palace built as a sequence of courtyards, each opening into the next: arcades carved with lace-like plaster, tiled walls, pools and channels of water, and beyond them a maze of gardens full of orange trees and palms.

    Did you know? Arabic inscriptions in Pedro I's palace refer to the Christian king as 'Sultan Don Bidru'.

    More about Royal Alcázar of Seville →

24. 24 Château de Pierrefonds

    France49.347° N 2.980° E

    

    Rising above a village on the edge of the forest of Compiègne, the Château de Pierrefonds looks like the ideal medieval castle from an illuminated manuscript: eight great round towers, double rows of covered wall-walks, steep slate roofs and a keep crowned with crenellated chimneys.

    Did you know? Besides The Man in the Iron Mask, the castle has appeared in Les Visiteurs, Highlander: The Series and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.

    More about Château de Pierrefonds →

25. 25 Château de Chantilly

    France · 38.6 km from Paris49.194° N 2.486° E

    

    Chantilly looks like a stage set: pale stone and steep roofs rising straight out of water, with Le Nôtre's canals and basins spread out in front and forest all around. It is really two buildings joined together. The Petit Château, built around 1560 and probably designed by Jean Bullant for the Montmorency family, is the refined Renaissance survivor.

    Did you know? The château and its Great Stables played the home of the villain Max Zorin in the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill.

    More about Château de Chantilly →