Not far from Madrid, at the foot of the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains, stands one of the most beautiful and best-preserved castles in all of Spain: the Castle of Manzanares

From the plains of Castile, in the heart of the great Spanish wine country of the Ribera del Duero, rises one of the most extraordinary castles in the world. The

Come over the hill toward Carcassonne, and you may think you have fallen asleep and woken inside a storybook. There, rising above the vineyards of southern France, stands an entire

High on a wooded peak above the town of Sintra, near Lisbon, stands one of the most extraordinary buildings in Europe: the Pena Palace. Painted in vivid reds and yellows,

Some places feel almost too dramatic to be real, and the Rock of Cashel is one of them. Rising straight out of the flat green farmland of County Tipperary, this

Strung out along a high limestone ridge above the River Vienne, the Royal Fortress of Chinon is one of the most storied castles in all of France. It is not

Of all the orders of warrior-monks that arose in the Middle Ages, none has captured the imagination like the Knights Templar, the mysterious and powerful brotherhood of fighting monks whose

Some castles are about beauty. The Tower of London is about power, and it never lets you forget it. For very nearly a thousand years this grim, grey fortress by

Some castles are single buildings; Óbidos is a whole town wrapped in walls. In the center of Portugal, north of Lisbon, rises one of the most enchanting sights in the

On the banks of the River Boyne, in the green heart of County Meath, stands the largest Anglo-Norman castle in all of Ireland. Trim Castle sprawls across a vast site