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

Built by King Carol I in the Carpathian Mountains, Romania’s Peles Castle fuses romantic Neo-Renaissance splendour with pioneering modern technology.

The colourful, dreamlike Pena Palace is Portugal’s masterpiece of Romanticism, built by an artist-king on a misty peak above Sintra.

A guide to the Peter and Paul Fortress, the birthplace of St. Petersburg.

On the banks of the river Neva in St Petersburg, its long green-and-white facade stretching in imperial splendour along the water and the great square before it, stands the palace

On the banks of the Elbe, a few kilometres upstream from Dresden, a cluster of palaces with curving, Chinese inspired roofs stands among vineyards, gardens and old trees. Pillnitz was

Partitioned out of existence, occupied, and devastated, the Poles preserved their language, faith, and identity through every catastrophe, a study in survival and an unyielding love of freedom.

At the end of a long avenue of chestnut trees in Bonn stands a baroque palace with an unusual secret: a perfectly round arcaded courtyard at its heart. Poppelsdorf Palace

On the humid Caribbean coast of Panama, where jungle-clad hills tumble down to a sheltered bay, lie the crumbling ruins of forts that once guarded one of the greatest concentrations

There are cities where the castle is a museum you visit and then leave behind, a stop between lunch and the train. Prague is not one of them. Here the