The Most Beautiful Medieval Castles in Europe

30 places in 13 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 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 →

3. 03 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 →

4. 04 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 →

5. 05 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 →

6. 06 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 →

7. 07 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 →

8. 08 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 →

9. 09 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 →

10. 10 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 →

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 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 →

13. 13 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 →

14. 14 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 →

15. 15 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 →

16. 16 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 →

17. 17 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 →

18. 18 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 →

19. 19 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 →

20. 20 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 →

21. 21 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 →

22. 22 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 →

23. 23 Wartburg

    Germany50.966° N 10.306° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    In 1521 Martin Luther arrived at Wartburg not as a guest but as a fugitive — the Diet of Worms had just declared him an outlaw whom anyone could kill without consequence, and his protector Frederick the Wise hid him here disguised as a minor nobleman, "Junker Jörg," beard grown out and sword at his side.

    Did you know? According to legend, Count Louis the Springer saw the hill around 1067 and exclaimed "Wait, mountain, you shall become a castle for me", giving Wartburg its name.

    More about Wartburg →

24. 24 Caernarfon Castle

    United Kingdom53.139° N 4.277° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Caernarfon Castle does not look like the other fortresses Edward I raised in Wales. Instead of round towers it has many-sided ones, and its long curtain walls are striped with bands of differently coloured stone. Historians have long debated why.

    Did you know? While the foundations were dug in 1283, Edward I and Queen Eleanor stayed on site for over a month in timber-framed apartments built for them.

    More about Caernarfon Castle →

25. 25 Leeds Castle

    United Kingdom · 34.1 km from Southend-on-Sea51.249° N 0.630° E

    

    Leeds Castle seems to float. Its pale stone ranges stand on islands in a lake formed by the River Len, and the water reflects them almost the whole way round. The lake was probably created under Edward I, who made the castle one of his favourite homes. The castle has nothing to do with the northern city of Leeds; it takes its name from the Kentish village beside it.

    Did you know? Queen Eleanor acquired the castle in 1278 by buying up its debt bond cheaply from Jewish moneylenders squeezed by her husband's heavy taxes.

    More about Leeds Castle →

26. 26 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 earlier castle of the Marques family was set on fire in 1412 as punishment for its owner's sedition against the crown.

    More about Château de Chenonceau →

27. 27 Chillon Castle

    Schloss Chillon

    Switzerland · 24.9 km from Lausanne46.414° N 6.928° E

    

    Chillon occupies a small, steep-sided oval of limestone that pushes out into the eastern end of Lake Geneva, between Montreux and Villeneuve. The position explains everything about it: the narrow shore here is the doorway from the Vaud Riviera into the Rhône valley and on towards the Great Saint Bernard Pass, so whoever held the rock could watch the road to Italy and collect tolls from everyone using it.

    Did you know? The Camera domini murals were painted in tempera between 1341 and 1343 by Jean de Grandson.

    More about Chillon Castle →

28. 28 Conwy Castle

    United Kingdom53.280° N 3.826° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Few medieval fortresses still look as complete from a distance as Conwy. Eight great round towers rise from a rocky ridge above the estuary of the River Conwy in North Wales, linked by high curtain walls of dark stone, and from the castle a ring of town walls with twenty-one towers and three gateways runs right round the old town.

    Did you know? Conwy Castle and its town walls were built for Edward I in about four years, between 1283 and 1287.

    More about Conwy Castle →

29. 29 Harlech Castle

    United Kingdom52.860° N 4.109° W

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    Harlech Castle sits on a crag of grey-green sandstone some sixty metres above the coastal flats of Cardigan Bay, with the mountains of Eryri behind it and the sea spread out in front.

    Did you know? The castle cost about £8,190 to build, roughly a tenth of what Edward I spent on Welsh castles between 1277 and 1304.

    More about Harlech Castle →

30. 30 Cardiff Castle

    United Kingdom · 0.9 km from Cardiff51.482° N 3.181° W

    

    Few places compress so much history into one walled enclosure in the middle of a modern city. Cardiff Castle began as a Roman fort, became a Norman stronghold and ended as one of the most extravagant Victorian fantasies in Britain, and all three layers are still visible within the same walls on the edge of the city's shopping streets.

    Did you know? The castle stands on the site of a Roman fort, and parts of the 3rd-century Roman wall survive at the base of its walls.

    More about Cardiff Castle →