The Most Beautiful Medieval Castles, Palaces and Fortresses in Europe

42 places in 15 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Prague Castle

   Pražský hrad

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

   

   Few castles have been a seat of power for as long as this one. The first walled church on the ridge above the Vltava went up around 870, and more than eleven centuries later the complex is still the office of the Czech head of state.

   Did you know? The St Wenceslas Crown kept here was made for Charles IV's coronation in 1347, weighs about 2.5 kg and is said to hold a thorn from Christ's crown.

   More about Prague Castle →

2. 02 Spiš Castle

   Spišský hrad

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

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Spiš Castle covers almost the whole top of a travertine hill above the town of Spišské Podhradie and the village of Žehra. With about 4 hectares inside its walls, it is one of the largest castle sites in Central Europe. Seen from the road, the long white spread of ruined walls along the ridge looks more like a fortified town than a castle.

   Did you know? Archaeologists have found that the hill was lived on almost continuously from the 5th millennium BC until the castle was abandoned in the 18th century.

   More about Spiš Castle →

3. 03 Torre del Oro

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

   

   The Torre del Oro, the Tower of Gold, has watched over the Guadalquivir in Seville for eight centuries. Its lowest and largest stage is Almohad work: a twelve-sided tower built in 1220–1221 on the orders of the governor of Seville, as the end point of a fortified wall running from the Alcázar down to the river, past the octagonal Torre de la Plata that still survives nearby.

   Did you know? The tower stands about 36.75 metres tall on foundations roughly 11 metres deep, six of which were added after the 1755 earthquake.

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4. 04 Wawel Castle

   Zamek Królewski na Wawelu

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

   

   Wawel is where Poland keeps its memory. On a limestone hill above the Vistula stand the royal castle and, beside it, the cathedral in which Polish kings were crowned and buried, and the whole ensemble has been part of the Historic Centre of Kraków World Heritage Site since 1978, when it was inscribed among the very first sites on the UNESCO list. 5 million visitors in 2025.

   Did you know? The Sigismund Bell in the cathedral tower, cast in 1520, weighs almost 13 tonnes and needs 12 ringers; it sounds only on major national and religious occasions.

   More about Wawel Castle →

5. 05 Alhambra

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

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The name comes from the Arabic for "the red one" — al-qal'a al-hamra, the red fortress — most likely a reference to the reddish clay used in its outer walls, visible at dusk when the whole hilltop seems to glow.

   Did you know? In the Hall of Ambassadors, Christopher Columbus put his plan for an Atlantic voyage to Ferdinand and Isabella, who signed his contract in April 1492 during their stay here.

   More about Alhambra →

6. 06 Castel del Monte

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

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Seen from the surrounding countryside of northern Apulia, Castel del Monte looks less like a fortress than a stone crown set on a hilltop 540 metres up. Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, had it built in the 1240s; a document of 1240 already orders work on it. What makes it unlike any other castle is its geometry.

   Did you know? A letter Frederick II sent from Gubbio in January 1240 orders building materials for a castle at Santa Maria del Monte, the site's original name.

   More about Castel del Monte →

7. 07 Tower of London

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

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   The Tower of London began as a statement of conquest. William the Conqueror founded it at the end of 1066, and the pale keep that gives the whole fortress its name, the White Tower, went up from 1078 as a deliberately overbearing presence above Saxon London and the river traffic of the Thames.

   Did you know? In 1252 King Haakon IV of Norway gave Henry III a polar bear, which Londoners watched fishing in the Thames on a long chain.

   More about Tower of London →

8. 08 Český Krumlov Castle

   Český Krumlov

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

   

   Český Krumlov Castle sprawls along a narrow rock ridge above a loop of the Vltava. Only Prague Castle is a larger castle-and-château complex in Bohemia. It was begun in the first third of the 13th century and is first recorded in 1253, when a lord of the Vítkovci family carried the name "of Krumlov". The Rosenbergs inherited it in 1302 and made it their seat.

   Did you know? Bears have been kept at the castle since the later sixteenth century, and four were recorded living in the moat as early as 1707.

   More about Český Krumlov Castle →

9. 09 Doge's Palace

   Palazzo Ducale

   Italy · 0.7 km from Venice45.434° N 12.340° E

   

   Seen from the lagoon, the Doge's Palace does something no textbook building should: its heavy, nearly solid upper storey sits on two tiers of delicate Gothic arcades, as if the palace were balanced on lace. That inversion is the signature of Venetian Gothic, and this is its grandest example.

   Did you know? The kneeling Doge Foscari above the Porta della Carta is a 19th-century replacement; the original was destroyed in 1797 after the fall of the Republic.

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10. 10 Khotyn Fortress

    Хотинська фортеця

    Ukraine · 19.1 km from Kamianets-Podilskyi48.522° N 26.498° E

    

    Khotyn Fortress rises from a rocky shelf on the high right bank of the Dniester in the town of Khotyn, in Ukraine's Chernivtsi Oblast.

    Did you know? In the 1621 Battle of Khotyn, a Commonwealth and Cossack force of about 50,000 held off an Ottoman army estimated at roughly 100,000.

    More about Khotyn Fortress →

11. 11 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? In 1517, after the last of the Thierstein line died, the castle was bought by Emperor Maximilian I.

    More about Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg →

12. 12 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 →

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 began in the 13th century as a royal fortress called Fronburg, probably founded by King Wenceslas I.

    More about Hluboká Castle →

14. 14 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? When work was completed around 1406 after more than 130 years of building, it was the largest brick castle anywhere.

    More about Malbork Castle →

15. 15 Golubac Fortress

    Голубачки Град

    Serbia44.661° N 21.678° E

    

    Golubac Fortress guards the gateway to the Iron Gates, the long gorge where the Danube squeezes through the Carpathians between Serbia and Romania. It stands on the Serbian bank a few kilometres downstream from the town of Golubac, at a point where the river is exceptionally broad, with Romania's village of Coronini on the far shore.

    Did you know? In 1427 the fortress's commander, refused a payment of 12,000 ducats by King Sigismund of Hungary, handed Golubac over to the Ottomans instead.

    More about Golubac Fortress →

16. 16 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 →

17. 17 Corvin Castle

    Castelul Corvinilor

    Romania · 15.1 km from Deva45.749° N 22.888° E

    

    Corvin Castle is the Transylvanian castle of the imagination made real: a steep-roofed Gothic fortress on a limestone crag, raised on a rock above the Zlaști stream. It is one of the largest medieval castles in Romania still standing, and a building that served both as a stronghold and a lordly residence. It stands in the south-western part of Hunedoara, long an iron-working town.

    Did you know? Its 19th-century rebuilding was continued by Imre Steindl, architect of the Hungarian Parliament, who aimed to renew the castle rather than faithfully restore it.

    More about Corvin Castle →

18. 18 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 →

19. 19 Palazzo Vecchio

    Italy · 1.3 km from Florence43.769° N 11.256° E

    

    A fortress-like block of rough-cut stone, crowned with projecting battlements and a slender tower rising 94 metres above Piazza della Signoria, the Palazzo Vecchio has been the seat of Florentine government for more than seven centuries and still houses the city's mayor.

    Did you know? The tower's one-handed clock was first built in 1353; the present mechanism is a 1667 replacement made by the Augsburg clockmaker Georg Lederle.

    More about Palazzo Vecchio →

20. 20 Dunnottar Castle

    United Kingdom · 22.9 km from Aberdeen56.946° N 2.197° W

    

    Dunnottar is a clifftop fortress on a detached-looking headland on the north-east coast of Scotland, about 3 km south of Stonehaven. 4-hectare summit is a natural citadel. Walls, towers and roofless halls are spread across the top, and the approach along the cliff path shows them outlined against open sea long before you reach the gate.

    Did you know? The Scottish crown jewels first arrived at Dunnottar in 1651 hidden in sacks of wool, brought by a woman named Katherine Drummond.

    More about Dunnottar Castle →

21. 21 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 village below grew up while the castle was being built; after the Hussite Wars it was renamed Buda, and later Budňany.

    More about Karlštejn Castle →

22. 22 Hohensalzburg Fortress

    Festung Hohensalzburg

    Austria · 1.8 km from Salzburg47.795° N 13.047° E

    

    Hohensalzburg Fortress covers the whole top of the Festungsberg, 506 metres above sea level, and at about 250 by 150 metres it is one of the largest medieval castles in Europe. It was begun in 1077 by Archbishop Gebhard of Salzburg, who had sided with Pope Gregory VII against Emperor Henry IV in the Investiture Controversy and needed a refuge.

    Did you know? The fortress's only siege, in 1525, lasted from 5 July to 31 August, and the rebel peasants and miners never broke in.

    More about Hohensalzburg Fortress →

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? The castle is first mentioned in writing in 1267, when it came into the hands of King Béla IV of Hungary.

    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? In the year the licence was granted, 1385, a French fleet of about 1,200 ships massed at Sluys in Flanders, spreading panic across southern England.

    More about Bodiam Castle →

25. 25 Royal Alcázar of Segovia

    Real Alcázar de Segovia

    Spain40.953° N 4.133° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    The Alcázar of Segovia stands at the very western end of the old city, on a rock spur where the Eresma and Clamores rivers meet, so that from the valley floor it seems to grow straight out of the cliff.

    Did you know? The ceiling of the Hall of the Galley, created for Queen Catherine of Lancaster in 1412, is shaped like an upturned ship's hull.

    More about Royal Alcázar of Segovia →

26. 26 Edinburgh Castle

    United Kingdom · 1.1 km from Edinburgh55.949° N 3.201° W

    

    Edinburgh Castle is less a building than a crown worn by a rock. Castle Rock is the plug of a volcano that went quiet some 350 million years ago: hard dolerite that the ice sheets could not grind away, leaving cliffs up to 80 metres high on three sides and a single gentle tail of rock running east. That tail became the Royal Mile, and the whole Old Town grew down it like a spine.

    Did you know? In 1314 thirty men under Thomas Randolph scaled the north face at night, guided by a former garrison soldier who knew a way up.

    More about Edinburgh Castle →

27. 27 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? King Matthias Corvinus gave the castle in 1489 to his illegitimate son, John Corvinus.

    More about Bojnice Castle →

28. 28 Hochosterwitz Castle

    Burg Hochosterwitz

    Austria · 18.1 km from Klagenfurt46.756° N 14.452° E

    

    Hochosterwitz stands on an isolated dolomite rock that rises about 170 metres above the Zollfeld plain in Carinthia, about 7 km east of St. Veit an der Glan; on a clear day it can be seen from some 30 km away. The rock was settled in the Bronze Age, and it enters written history in 860 as Astarwiza, in a deed of the East Frankish king Louis the German granting estates in the region to the Archbishopric of Salzburg.

    Did you know? The first gate, finished in 1580, shows two larger-than-life flag-bearers waving Khevenhüller black and gold and the red and white of Carinthia.

    More about Hochosterwitz Castle →

29. 29 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 →

30. 30 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? Gustav II Adolf, stopping on his way back from campaigns in Poland in 1622, is the only reigning king known to have visited the castle.

    More about Olavinlinna Castle →