Castles Map: 20 Maps of Ruins, Rock Castles and Clan Seats

Castle maps tend to sort castles by what is left of them. One map of the British Isles files 2,148 sites in eight layers, from standing stone walls down to “castle in name, if not nature”; a Scottish one notes that a castle fell down in 1785 and that its foundations had gone by about 1860; a Welsh one rates every mound for condition and access. Others collect castles one visit at a time: a Japanese castle-bagger keeps 5,267 sites in “climbed” and “not yet” layers, and a hiker in Ōita logs the route up each hill fort, most of them walked in the days around New Year.

1. British Isles Castles Map: 2,148 Sites by What Survives

   Gwrych Castle is a “Grade 1 listed 19th Century Manor House”, Hagley and Clent are an “18th Century Folly/Sham Castle”, and Reigate has “No remains of original castle other than baron’s cave, only 18th Century mock gateway”: they all sit in a layer called “Castle in name, if not nature”. The other seven layers sort the British Isles by what survives: masonry castles and town walls with stone remains, masonry castles with none, timber castles that survive as earthworks, pele towers and bastles, fortified manor houses, and a layer for the uncertain and disputed, where Welsh mottes such as Hook Tump and Castell Wladus at Pencaer link to the Gatehouse gazetteer. Many of the stone castles link to posts on the Completely Castles blog, Raglan to three of them, and the photos are credited “Pic: Lucy Sheers”.

   

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   2,1482,148 points

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   United KingdomIrelandIsle of Manand 2 more

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2. Medieval Castles of Aragon Map: 5,547 Castles of a Crown

   The Crown of Aragon is drawn here as its castles, from the Carolingian period to the end of the 15th century, one layer per realm: the Principality of Catalonia, the kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca, Sardinia and Sicily with the County of Malta, and Naples with the duchies of Athens and Neopatria. Most entries carry a century and a link to the Catalunya Romànica encyclopedia: the Castell de Queralt is 9th century, Olèrdola 10th, “previously settled by Iberians and Romans”. Catalonia gets a layer of its vanished castles, each marked “desaparegut”, from Rivert to Puigllorenç, and many Catalan castles carry a terse “fet dron”, drone done. The Sicilian layer reaches Djerba, where Borj el Castil is noted with a single name, Roger de Llúria.

   

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   5,5475,547 points

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   SpainItalyFranceand 12 more

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3. Japanese Castles Map: A Castle-Bagger's 5,267 Sites, Rated

   Himeji, Inuyama and Matsumoto get nine stars out of ten; Hikone, Maruoka, Uwajima and Hirosaki get seven. The twelve castles whose original keeps survive have a layer of their own here, all climbed and rated, and the rest of Japan’s castles sit in two layers, “climbed” and “not yet”. The unvisited ones carry long notes, among them the wajo that Japanese armies built in Korea during the invasions of the 1590s: Seosaengpo near Ulsan, built by Katō Kiyomasa, and Suncheon, begun in November 1597 by Konishi Yukinaga and others. At Sugiyama the note is one line on a scholars’ dispute: the finds say Uesugi, the layout says Hōjō. Further layers hold battlefields, graves, birthplaces and statues.

   

   Objects

   5,2675,267 points

   Countries

   JapanSouth Korea

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4. Castles of Scotland Map: 769 Towers, Ruins and Lost Sites

   Old Lochmaben Castle, the possible birthplace of Robert the Bruce in 1274, is “located at 2nd green and 3rd tee of Lochmaben Golf Course”. Every castle on this map gets its state, often in a word (“Preserved”, “Slight Remains”, “Used as a hotel”, “No Remains”), sometimes in a paragraph from the record. Bishop’s Castle in Glasgow was demolished in 1789 to make way for the Glasgow Royal Infirmary; at Barnyards, several vaults and walls five to seven feet high stood until the remains were removed in the late 18th century; Bonnyton fell down in 1785, its foundation was visible in 1833 and gone by about 1860. Dorlaithers is now a modern farm cottage, and Abbot’s Tower near New Abbey, built by the Abbot of Sweetheart Abbey, is a bed and breakfast.

   

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   769769 points

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   United Kingdom

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5. Castles Around the World Map: r/castles Posts, Pinned

   “Picture I took myself of Akershus Fortress” is the thread behind one pin, and that is how the heart of this map was built: castles posted to Reddit’s r/castles, each pinned with its photo and a link to the thread. Bannerman’s Castle stands abandoned on Pollepel Island in the Hudson, Ballycarbery on the Ring of Kerry is pinned twice from two threads, and India adds Arnala and Ausa Fort. One pin links a post about a tour of 12 Scottish castles at Ardvreck; another marks Fort Kosmač, the southernmost fortress of the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the border with Montenegro. A second layer adds building outlines from OpenStreetMap.

   

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   14,9334,847 points, 385 lines, 9,701 areas

   Countries

   FranceUnited KingdomGermanyand 54 more

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   OpenStreetMap uMap

   Versions

   1 other version

6. Czech Castles Map: 2,432 Castles, Forts and Rock Castles

   Klemperka and Kostelíček were castles cut into the rock, and the map files them as “remains of a rock (cave) castle”. Built on the site hrady-zriceniny.cz, it sorts the Czech Republic into castles, tvrze (small fortified manors), ruins of both, castles rebuilt as chateaux such as Bechyně, and a layer of terrain remains and lost sites. That last layer is the richest: rock castles in northern Bohemia such as Drábovna and Čertova ruka, a “presumed rock castle” at Jiljov, and manors like Alberovice that survive only as traces in the terrain. Every entry gives its type, its character and a photo from the site.

   

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   2,4322,432 points

   Countries

   CzechiaPolandGermany

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7. Dracula Castle Map: Bran, Slains and Nosferatu Sets

   Bran Castle is “marketed as Dracula’s castle”, the note says, with “only vague similarities” to the castle in the novel, and Vlad Țepeș was probably never there; the “Castel Dracula” is a hotel from the 1980s “with no historical relation to Dracula”. This map sorts the real places behind the legend: Vlad’s own sites, Jonathan Harker’s route, Whitby’s abbey and 199 steps, and New Slains Castle, where Bram Stoker stayed in 1892 and 1894. Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu of 1979 gets its locations by timecode, with Delft as the plague town, Hrad Strečno in Slovakia and Pernštejn as the castle, and the mummies of Guanajuato in the opening credits. One waterfall is marked “maybe this one?”.

   

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   6159 points, 2 lines

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   RomaniaNetherlandsSlovakiaand 8 more

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8. Castles of Wales Map: 463 Sites, Condition and Access

   “Barland Motte is actually a collapsed rectangular tower,” says one entry, and the map records every site in Wales the same way: type, condition (“major ruin”, “lesser ruin”, “footings/earthworks”, “site only”, “occupied”) and access, from “Chargeable Public Access” to “no access”. The great castles are here, Beaumaris “Never completed”, Caernarfon a “massive ruined castle-palace of Edward I”, but so are the mottes nobody visits. Aberffraw is the lost site of the court of the princes of Gwynedd, Aberafan is “Built over”, Brecon’s ruins are part of a 19th-century hotel, and Caerau Motte sits inside a Roman fort that holds a farmyard. The single layer is named after the spreadsheet: “Wales phases 1 and 2 for draft mymaps version 2.xlsx”.

   

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   463463 points

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   United Kingdom

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9. Ōita Castle Ruins Map: 67 Hikes Up Hill Forts

   On 30 December 2019 the author of “Napo’s Castle Ruins Tours” climbed from 553 to 1,054 metres to reach Yuruki Castle, 5.9 kilometres in 2 hours 46 minutes. This map of Ōita Prefecture’s castle ruins links each site to a blog post and adds 67 walked routes, each with date, time, distance and elevation, and most of them fall between 28 and 31 December or early January, from 2019 to 2023. Lines also trace dry moats, as at Takasaki, and the stamp points for the 100 Famous Castles are marked with their opening hours, at Oka Castle 300 yen for adults.

   

   Objects

   253125 points, 128 lines

   Countries

   Japan

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10. German Castles Map: 10,788 Burgen, Schlösser and Manors

    Objekt 00001 is Kastell Holten, a moated castle built in 1307 by Count Engelbert II of the Mark, and the numbers run on through more than 6,000 German castles, palaces and knightly manors. The notes say how close the collector came: “Außenbesichtigung”, seen from outside, or just “Blickkontakt”, eye contact, as at Schloss Riede and Burg Denstedt. A separate layer of visited places starts again at D0001 with the ruin of Ravensberg, built around 1080, and links to maps of the listed buildings of towns such as Gütersloh and Meppen. Many entries link to scans in the digital collections of Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek, and further layers cover England, Scotland and the houses of English Heritage and the National Trust.

    

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    10,78810,788 points

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    GermanyUnited KingdomAustriaand 17 more

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11. Scottish Clan Castles Map: 154 Seats, Old and Current

    Neil Armstrong visited Gilnockie Tower, seat of the Armstrongs, a few years after landing on the moon, and the clan centre inside has a small exhibition on him. This map pairs each clan with its seats, historic and current: Robert the Bruce gave the Boyds the land of Dean Castle for their support at Bannockburn in 1314, the Cockburns sold their tower in 1696 to pay off debts, and Achnacarry of the Camerons was destroyed by government troops after the Jacobite rising and rebuilt in 1802. Cochrane Tower has no remains, only a monument of 1896, and Lochindorb of the Cummings stands on an artificial island.

    

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    154154 points

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    United Kingdom

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    Google My Maps

12. Star Fort Map: 1,744 Bastion Forts on Five Continents

    Cape Coast Castle is marked with two words, “A ‘slave castle’”, and it stands among a string of forts on the coast of Ghana, Elmina, Coenraadsburg, Fort Amsterdam and Osu among them. The map gathers star forts and their bastioned relatives by continent: Cape Town Castle of around 1660, Cacheu, built by Portugal in 1588, Fort Carnot in Thailand, the most northerly French outpost in Indochina, and two-bastion forts in Sri Lanka. Some have moved on: Fort San Antonio Abad lies within the central bank complex in Manila, and Fort Thane became a prison. Fort Frederik on St. Croix claims to have given the first foreign salute to the U.S. flag, in 1776.

    

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    1,7441,734 points, 10 lines

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    FranceNetherlandsItalyand 102 more

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13. Norman Motte Map: 96 Castles and Lords of Seine-Maritime

    Osbern de Bolbec married a sister of Gunnor, wife of Duke Richard I, and his fief at Bolbec is where the Giffard line began. This map of castles and mottes from the 10th to 13th centuries is a map of who held what: the Giffards left Bolbec for Montivilliers around 1020 to 1030, the lords of Cany were their vassals, and William the Marshal, heir of the Giffards, held Cany’s dependencies around 1220. Gravenchon lists its counts of Évreux by year, Lillebonne is the palace of the dukes, and some mottes keep their question mark, such as Criquetot-L’Esneval.

    

    Objects

    9696 points

    Countries

    France

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    OpenStreetMap uMap

14. Japanese Castle Game Map: 3,000 Forts for Nippon Castle Tour

    Number 1 is not a castle with a keep but the Kamuikotan chashi in Asahikawa, one of the Ainu hilltop forts that open this list of 3,000 Japanese castles and fortifications, made as a reference for the location game Nippon Castle Tour. Two CSV layers run from Hokkaido to Chubu and from Kinki to the Ryukyus, each entry with its number, prefecture, reading in furigana and the game status “攻略: 済”, captured. The Hokkaido entries read like a survey of the Ainu forts, from the Otariomappu chashi in Saru district to the Nemuro peninsula, with the Tokachi jinya of the Edo period among them.

    

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    3,0003,000 points

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    Japan

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15. Pyrenees Watchtower Map: 315 Towers, Telegraphs and Castles

    Tour Carmanxel is tower number 201 of the optical telegraph line from La Jonquera to Barcelona, and since 2002 it has served as a mountain refuge. This map of the Pyrénées-Orientales and Girona sorts towers, castles and fortified sites by their state, restored, rehabilitated, partly preserved, advanced ruin or vanished, and by kind: isolated towers, towers attached to a building, the network of main towers, and the optical telegraph. Chapels served as lookouts too, and several are marked “chapelle observatoire”, Notre-Dame du Coral now a gîte. Many entries credit the survey of Jean Boissée; the Château de Corbère is “the abandoned cradle of the village”.

    

    Objects

    315279 points, 36 lines

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    FranceSpain

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16. Irish Castles Map: 8,376 Medieval Sites from the Record

    At Tullovin the record lists a castle, a Sheela-na-gig and a bawn, and quotes a mention of “Tuloven C[astle]” in 1586. This map pours Ireland’s Sites and Monuments Record into layers for castles and fortifications, tower houses, churches, religious houses and social sites, each entry with its ID and the archaeologists’ description. The motte at Kilsheelan guards the ford of the River Suir, in a manor Henry II granted to William de Burgh; at Poulakerry a notarial deed of 1525 names Richard and Theobald Butler; at Ballymacoda the castle site lies in an abandoned farmyard.

    

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    8,3768,376 points

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    IrelandUnited Kingdom

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17. Latvian Castles Map: 111 Castles of the Livonian Order

    The stone castle of Emburga is attested by J. Šturm’s drawing of 1661, which shows it from the far bank of the Lielupe. This map collects the castles of the Livonian Order, the bishops and their vassals across Latvia, each with its history in Latvian and most with a link to pilis.lv. Sigulda was built in 1207, Cēsis was one of the first stone fortifications the German crusaders raised in Latvia, and Kandava, castle of a vogt of the Order, was lived in until 1750, when its castellan moved out because of its poor state. Some entries credit their pictures to J. C. Brotze.

    

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    111111 points

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    Latvia

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18. Turkey Castles Map: 307 Forts from Istanbul to Kars

    The Dardanelles forts that the British and French fleets faced carry their numbers: Ertuğrul No. 1, Seddülbahir No. 3, Kumkale No. 6, Yıldız No. 9, “exact location unknown”. This map, part of Jacob Bogle’s FortressEarth Mapping Project, covers fortifications in Turkey from 1000 AD on, with layers for the Dardanelles campaign, the redoubts of Kars in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877 to 78, Edirne, Erzurum, and Istanbul’s walls segment by segment. The rest is castles, Alanya’s surrounded by 6.5 kilometres of walls.

    

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    307280 points, 27 lines

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    TürkiyeSyria

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19. Croatian Castles Map: 1,100 Forts, Castra and Hillforts

    The Byzantine fort on Veliki Sikavac turned out to be the size of a football pitch, 110 by 55 metres, once more than a hundred cubic metres of stone had been cleared away. This map of the Tragovima starih putova heritage project covers Croatia’s castles, Roman and Byzantine castra and hillforts, many with notes on history and whether a signpost, hiking marks and an information board lead the way. Bogočin, the “fairy town”, stands on a rock above a gorge, reached by a single path; Beli grad near Roč was the defensive tower of Črni grad opposite, and Bršljanac first appears in a charter of King Charles Robert in 1316.

    

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    1,1001,100 points

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    CroatiaBosnia and HerzegovinaSloveniaand 3 more

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20. Castle Girls Map: Real Castles Behind a Japanese Game

    In the game Shiro Project: RE every castle is a girl, and this map pins each character to her castle, with links to the game wiki and to her seasonal versions, New Year, Valentine’s Day or wedding dress. The author also locates the game’s battles, marked as estimates: chapter 1 at Yanagawa Castle, chapter 8 on Katsurahama beach in Tosa, chapter 11 at the whirlpools of Naruto. A further layer lists the European castles not yet in the game, from Dún Aonghasa on the Aran Islands and Hohenwerfen to the Palamidi fortress and the acropolis of Mycenae.

    

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    723723 points

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    JapanUnited KingdomFranceand 41 more

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