There is a picture, painted more than six hundred years ago, that shows a castle so beautiful it hardly seems real: a vision of white towers and golden weathervanes and

On the eastern edge of Paris, where the city gives way to a great wooded park, stands one of the most remarkable and least expected of all French castles: the

On a white chalk cliff high above a great loop of the River Seine, in the heart of Normandy, stand the broken but still mighty walls of Château Gaillard. Even

Some castles tell one story. The Chateau Royal de Blois tells four at once. Stand in its courtyard and turn slowly around, and you will see the whole history of

If Caernarfon was Edward I’s imperial showpiece, Conwy was his perfect fortress. Standing on a rock where the River Conwy meets the sea in North Wales, it is, for many

Some ruins look sad. Corfe Castle looks defiant. Torn apart by gunpowder nearly four centuries ago, its great towers left leaning at crazy angles, its walls split and scattered down

Stand on the battlements of Dover Castle on a clear day and you can see France. That single fact explains almost everything about the place. For two thousand years, this

Most castles are content to guard one town or one stretch of coast. Dublin Castle set out to rule a whole country. For the better part of seven hundred years

Some castles impress you. Dunnottar stops you in your tracks. Perched on the flat top of a great rock that juts out into the North Sea, all but severed from

There are castles that dominate a town, and then there is Edinburgh Castle, which dominates a whole nation’s imagination. Rising on a sheer black crag in the very centre of