The Most Beautiful Castles in Spain
7 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful castles in Spain are Royal Alcázar of Segovia, Aljafería and Castle of Coca. The list covers 7 castles. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Few countries were shaped by castles as thoroughly as Spain. For nearly eight centuries the Iberian Peninsula was a frontier between Christian kingdoms and Muslim al-Andalus, and both sides fortified every ridge, river crossing and town; the kingdom of Castile takes its very name from the castles that guarded its borders. The result is a country with castles of every tradition: Moorish alcazabas and palaces, Romanesque strongholds, and the brick fortresses of the late Middle Ages.
The Royal Alcázar of Segovia rises like the prow of a ship on a rock between two rivers, its slate spires added in later centuries. The Alcazaba of Almería, founded in the tenth century under the Caliphate of Córdoba, stretches along a ridge above the city and the sea. The Aljafería in Zaragoza began as an eleventh-century palace of a Muslim ruler and preserves interlacing arches of rare intricacy, while the Royal Alcázar of Seville, rebuilt by Pedro I in the fourteenth century, is the finest example of Mudéjar palace architecture, with tiled halls and courtyard gardens.
Other castles show the Christian side of the frontier. Loarre Castle in Aragon, one of the best preserved Romanesque castles in Europe, grows out of the rock of a mountainside. The Castle of Coca, built of brick in the fifteenth century in Mudéjar style, is a fortress turned into a showpiece of patterned walls and towers. Bellver Castle above Palma de Mallorca, built in the fourteenth century, is one of the very few circular castles in Europe.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Royal Alcázar of Segovia | Castle | ✓ |
| 2 | Aljafería | Palace | ✓ |
| 3 | Castle of Coca | Castle | |
| 4 | Alcazaba of Almería | Castle | |
| 5 | Bellver Castle | Castle | |
| 6 | Loarre Castle | Castle | |
| 7 | Royal Alcázar of Seville | Palace | ✓ |
01 Royal Alcázar of Segovia
Real Alcázar de Segovia
Spain40.953° N 4.133° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Ángel Sanz de Andrés · CC BY-SA 4.0 Walk down into the valley below the castle, along the Eresma, to see it rise above the trees; the view from the Clamores side, looking up at the tip of the rock, shows how completely the building follows the stone.
Did you know? Re-gilding the Hall of the Galley after the 1862 fire used about four kilograms of gold.
02 Aljafería
Spain · 0.9 km from Zaragoza41.656° N 0.897° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Pixels4Free from Pixabay After the Christian conquest of Zaragoza in 1118 the palace became a residence of the kings of Aragon, and each age added its own layer. Ferdinand and Isabella built new rooms between 1488 and 1495, including a throne hall whose carved and once-gilded wooden ceiling is divided into thirty deep coffers, each holding an octagon with a hanging pine-cone boss. The Inquisition set up its headquarters here in the 1480s, Philip II ringed the complex with a moat and bastions in the 1590s, and it spent the following centuries as a barracks.
Did you know? Interlaced mixtilinear arches appear here for the first time in Islamic architecture and spread from Zaragoza to later buildings in al-Andalus and North Africa.
03 Castle of Coca
Castillo de Coca
Spain41.215° N 4.526° W
Ignacio Cobos Rey ( Lironcareto ) · CC BY-SA 2.5 The plan is rectangular, with a ruined outer wall and a better-preserved inner enclosure flanked by corner towers. The largest is the keep, the Torre del Homenaje, about 25 metres high, threaded by a narrow brick spiral stair; the armoury inside is covered by a Gothic rib vault patterned with multicoloured geometric designs, and from the top the castles of Cuéllar and Íscar can be seen. White limestone is reserved for details such as arrow slits and the columns of the parade ground. Coca itself is an ancient place: as Roman Cauca it was the birthplace of the emperor Theodosius I.
Did you know? A 1503 decree by Queen Isabella allowed only male heirs to inherit Coca, which barred the owner's two daughters and sent the castle to his brother instead.
04 Alcazaba of Almería
Spain · 3.9 km from Almería36.841° N 2.472° W
ANE · CC BY 3.0 The third enclosure, at the highest point, is a Christian castle built for the Catholic Monarchs, designed for an age of gunpowder artillery and grouped around a parade ground under its keep, the Torre del Homenaje. The Muro de la Vela, the wall dividing the first enclosure from the second, takes its name from a bell that warned of ships entering the bay, fires and danger. In the nineteenth century most of the town walls were demolished, but the Alcazaba survived. Its silhouette has served as a film set many times, from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to the Dorne scenes of Game of Thrones.
Did you know? Its fortifications run for roughly 1,430 metres in all, and it is often ranked as the second-largest fortress of Moorish origin in Spain after Badajoz.
05 Bellver Castle
Spain · 3.2 km from Palma de Mallorca39.564° N 2.619° E
Fedoce1 (Fernando Domínguez Cerejido) · CC BY-SA 4.0 Palma itself is the capital of the Balearic Islands and the island's main port, and from Bellver the whole city can be read at a glance, from the harbour at Portopí to the old centre.
Did you know? During the Spanish Civil War republican and Catalanist politicians were imprisoned here, among them Emili Darder, a former mayor of Palma.
06 Loarre Castle
Castillo de Loarre
Spain42.326° N 0.612° W
Image by matressa_ from Pixabay Once Huesca fell and the frontier moved south, the castle lost its purpose; it changed hands between nobles and religious orders, and in 1413 it was besieged as a stronghold of the rebellious Count of Urgell. In the 15th century the villagers who lived at its foot moved down to the present town of Loarre, taking stones with them. It was declared a National Monument in 1906 and restored in stages from 1913 onwards, with major work in the 1970s. Visitors climb the vaulted stair from the entrance, pass the crypt, enter the church, and continue up through the soldiers' quarters, cistern and kitchens to the keep, which was linked to the castle by a drawbridge.
Did you know? In 1071 Pope Alexander II took the monastery of San Pedro de Loarre under papal protection, linked to the introduction of the Roman rite.
07 Royal Alcázar of Seville
Spain · 2.5 km from Seville37.384° N 5.991° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Danor from Pixabay The palace was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, together with Seville's cathedral and the Archive of the Indies, and it has served as a set for films and series from Lawrence of Arabia to Game of Thrones.
Did you know? In 1526 Emperor Charles V married Isabella of Portugal in the Hall of Ambassadors.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful castles in Spain?
- On our list, Royal Alcázar of Segovia ranks first, followed by Aljafería and Castle of Coca.
- Why is Castile named after castles?
- The name comes from the many castles built along the frontier of the medieval county of Castile during the wars with al-Andalus. The Latin name Castella means, roughly, the land of castles.
- What does alcázar mean?
- Alcázar comes from the Arabic al-qasr, meaning castle or palace. In Spain it names fortified royal residences, such as the alcázars of Seville and Segovia.
- Which castle in Spain is round?
- Bellver Castle in Palma de Mallorca, built in the early fourteenth century, has a circular plan with a round courtyard and towers, which makes it one of the very few round castles in Europe.
- How many castles are on this list in Spain?
- The list covers 7 castles.