High above the old town of Tbilisi, crowning the steep ridge of Sololaki that rises sheer from the banks of the Kura river, stands the ancient fortress of Narikala, the

It is the castle of a thousand postcards, a hundred films, a million dreams. Rising white and turreted from a wooded crag high in the Bavarian Alps, its slender towers

Not far from the serene halls of the Kyoto Imperial Palace stands a very different kind of residence, one built not for a reigning emperor but for the military ruler

Many of the castles in this series are fairy tales, romantic fantasies built or rebuilt in the nineteenth century to look the way we imagine castles should look. The Imperial

There is a castle in the far east of Finland that looks as though it were dreamed up for a fairy tale and then somehow built in solid grey stone.

Some castles are famous for a single dramatic moment, a great siege or a legendary lord, and once you know that one story you feel you have understood the place.

In the far west of Ukraine, in the beautiful region of Transcarpathia beyond the great arc of the Carpathian mountains, a mighty medieval castle crowns a lone hill rising abruptly

High in the wooded Carpathian mountains of Romania, in a valley surrounded by dark forests and dramatic peaks, rises one of the most beautiful and romantic royal residences in all

Most of the castles in this series were born of war, raised to guard a pass or overawe a region, their beauty almost accidental. Peleş is different. It was built

Every so often a castle does more than witness history; it makes it. Pembroke, standing on a great rock almost surrounded by a tidal river in the far south-west of