The World's 2,400 Castles

137 points - today at 4:05 PM

Source

Comments

mxfh today at 4:45 PM
If you submit some map, at least don't have the title contradict the content description:

"the 2,435 most significant landmarks worldwide, ordered by a fame ranking that blends Wikipedia coverage with real readership."

or someone fix the title here please to what on the app right now:

"Map of the world's great castles & fortresses" whatever that means.

Germany's Saxony alone has 700+ fortications with about 100 being touristically interesting. In the map I count like 9.

clickety_clack today at 4:44 PM
This is off by many degrees of magnitude for Ireland at least: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1nkvqd7/oc...
Bedon292 today at 5:36 PM
Cool idea, horrible dataset. Its limited to things in Wikidata rather than using OSM, and it must have an article on Wikipedia in English to count so I am sure it is missing just based on that. And somehow it misses many castles (and other categories it includes) which do meet those requirements.

There is no definition of what they use to categorize anything either. And it clearly isn't applied consistently. There is a ChĂąteau category and yet many things with ChĂąteau in their name are tagged as castles.

mrjay42 today at 6:20 PM
Nice project :3

There's a MASSIVE amount of castles missing

Just for France, the castle visible on the map -> this is not even 5%

Depending on the count it goes from 20000 castles to 45000 (just for France!)

tagami today at 7:41 PM
My first dotcom began by listing German castles for sale after the wall fell. https://web.archive.org/web/19970102101502/http://www.re.com...
Yhippa today at 6:09 PM
Clearly vibe-coded. Cool idea though. I can see what was leveraged from the Wikipedia data set.

Side question: why does Claude prefer dark backgrounds with low-contrast text?

Aardwolf today at 7:46 PM
That's less than I expected for worldwide

Apparently Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, etc... were not really into castles, while Japan was?

SubiculumCode today at 5:34 PM
https://thecastlemap.com/

Peer’s Certificate issuer is not recognized.

HTTP Strict Transport Security: false HTTP Public Key Pinning: false

Certificate chain:

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- MIIDbjCCAlagAwIBAgIIGMReeVlgUbwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQELBQAwaDELMAkGA1UE BhMCVVMxEzARBgNVBAgMCkNhbGlmb3JuaWExFDASBgNVBAcMC1NhbnRhIENsYXJh MRcwFQYDVQQKDA5JbmZvYmxveCwgSW5jLjEVMBMGA1UEAwwMaW5mb2Jsb3guY29t MB4XDTI2MDEwNTIwMTAyMloXDTI3MDMzMTIwMTAyMlowGzEZMBcGA1UEAxMQdGhl Y2FzdGxlbWFwLmNvbTCCASIwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADggEPADCCAQoCggEBAKx1 FdJskXQ/SUOQA+ClFQFTTP7uhSGQ0HUIPHjexi/uEQxlt6cw3+1GkWkbhvBchyip 83Vz/ysqObYV0RL85pAJJRKy3zazXb2UadY3kuCnNReCscH3TUJ+KRY1siuTVHgl fnMP5axUvrR+k/Lx5Pojr2T46gjpd+93gT9I4W3Sd98MRrOo6xCopicJ1cLadYGg 7BVz1zj1nyyPIXKfHSiEBxahFK7wLG+Uz3TqrNIBHcI7Te3BuIzkM7g4XE+DmnSg jFo4Emf4U10VwI2i+YFi4JpoOr4SFF/ruy7tntsFRIdHXaE5YoDvJu5My9VmGicG WwZSJ9dw9nqBQf6UE48CAwEAAaNpMGcwEwYDVR0lBAwwCgYIKwYBBQUHAwEwHwYD VR0jBBgwFoAUcWvREelOR6JJ2t8FGZq4V7LnXFowLwYDVR0RBCgwJoIQdGhlY2Fz dGxlbWFwLmNvbYISKi50aGVjYXN0bGVtYXAuY29tMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBCwUAA4IB AQB3Of7y+3aeTWwcta9nbMERIZWw28QGr1bwMDrAY97y7FmToUkGCWw3M5SovEi1 M3p92t1puVyM3A+qxQ2dxIx4jgQJZbnhz7k3gqSUJ7cjVwiL3QJXKoge1zBYL9tA DQ8YeBLoseGjI0hgXeB2QrbrIdMpJ4Hp8uHuDNiyzGDmvg8RuMDCpzfUPfvYQFBD c0Vp+9mf2jRTIBhXslJewM3D26ZiEYbcisR2v3+R+jc0AFkqi2wp7tAU+nG+w4A6 Dy6tLN+EgQ1MBGBrFZFoPO7wRCk1nNItxTGlNlLBvTN9by5i7XE5PNQPOxL/JN3i hRZpkDAQCiMnfFgIGw0exlxY -----END CERTIFICATE-----

suzzer99 today at 6:42 PM
I had to look up Madagascar's castle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rova_of_Antananarivo

The Rova of Antananarivo /ˈruːvə/ (Malagasy: Rovan'i Manjakamiadana [ˈruvᔊn manˌdzakəmiˈadə̄nᔊ]) is a royal palace complex (rova) in Madagascar that was the home of the sovereigns of the Kingdom of Imerina in the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as of the rulers of the Kingdom of Madagascar in the 19th century. Located in the central highland city of Antananarivo, the Rova occupies the highest point on Analamanga, formerly the highest of Antananarivo's many hills.

yabones today at 5:31 PM
Not sure if they count, but the site appears to be missing loads of British star-forts built around the great lakes, st. lawrence, and eastern Canada!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citadel_Hill_(Fort_George)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Island_(Nova_Scotia)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citadelle_of_Quebec

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Fort_Erie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Anne

They built these things _everywhere_, probably a good part of what bankrupted the British Empire!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Charlotte_(Nassau)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Wales_Fort

runxel today at 4:37 PM
Very cool project, but obviously missing (too) many great castles. I'm not sure if that way of measuring popularity is really well done.
prmph today at 5:32 PM
Nice project, but what is "hidden" gem about Elmina castle in Ghana?

If Cape Coast Castle is described as "world renowned", then Elmina should be as well. I live in Ghana their popularity is almost evenly matched.

Also Elmina castle is the oldest and largest European building in existence in sub-Saharan Africa.

One more thing, it is kind of hard to click on specific dots when they are so clustered together. I had to zoom in a lot to see and be able to click on some of the castles I knew were there.

pimlottc today at 7:51 PM
Is this anything more substantial than a weekend-coded public data scrape?
ipunchghosts today at 8:40 PM
This is missing castles. There are several in and near lerici Italy not listed
relevant_stats today at 5:20 PM
This is not a "map of castles".

I checked my local area, and it omits interesting castles, instead including palaces, landmarks and world war era fortresses.

Shameful submission.

r721 today at 7:25 PM
Comment from dev in previous submission:

>This project is in early stages and the information is brought by wikipedia. The goal of this project is to make castle viewing a bit more fun.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48861309

1970-01-01 today at 4:39 PM
Why nothing in North America but forts? There are lots of ancient structures that should be considered. Ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montezuma_Castle_National_Monu...
deton3991 today at 4:50 PM
What's really neat about this isn't just the visualization, but that they’ve packaged the whole dataset as open GeoJSON/CSV mirrored on Hugging Face and GitHub—plus an MCP endpoint for AI agents.
Brendinooo today at 5:24 PM
The local "castle" on the map is Fort Duquesne, which is listed as "ruins" but in fact has no ruins to visit. It says "The site of both forts is now occupied by Point State Park, where the outlines of the two forts have been laid in granite slabs" - which is true, but...there are no ruins here!

If forts count as castles, at least do Fort Pitt, which has the blockhouse functional.

Anyways - this is a fun project and it should continue!

allturtles today at 4:58 PM
This dataset is bad. The North Carolina state capitol is a castle?
kinow today at 4:37 PM
I went to a castle in Dunedin, New Zealand, but NZ seems to be castle-less: Larnach Castle, https://www.larnachcastle.co.nz/.

Brazil also has a few castles, although not sure if they are classified differently -- https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_castelos_no_Brasil

jollyllama today at 4:40 PM
Needs some of the ones referenced here (including the Dupont Castle, the work of the site's author, who lasted provided a work update in '22): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27929729

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44948352

hggh today at 4:41 PM
Wrong title. Wrong not even by two orders of magnitude.
notorandit today at 7:04 PM
Italy, like Germany, Austria and maybe a few more European countries host more than 5,000 "castles".
geff82 today at 7:47 PM
Interesting, still I miss most castles around me.
CrzyLngPwd today at 7:04 PM
Since forts are included in the USA, there are loads of Napoleonic forts missing in the UK.

Plymouth is surrounded by them.

modeless today at 4:41 PM
Is Fort Ross really "Renowned" as listed? I've never heard of it and honestly it doesn't look very interesting. I'd rather visit Fort Knox which is a real fortification currently in use, world famous, and not listed here.
samfar90 today at 4:38 PM
Clicking on full story doesn't do anything. It closes the popup (mobile android)
sebnukem2 today at 5:31 PM
The ones in the area where I used to live are all missing.
meerita today at 6:55 PM
Would be amazing to see which one of these are on sale.
pizzathyme today at 4:33 PM
We just stayed in Dalhousie Castle, the oldest in Scotland. Very beautiful and well maintained, with lots of spooky history.

If you want to leave a legacy, build something out of stone.

makeusgreat today at 5:50 PM
Hearst Castle Missing. Please add it, it’s probably the most famous castle in California.
lifeisstillgood today at 5:32 PM
The 10 most famous castles in the world

Palace of Versailles France

Forbidden City People's Republic of China

Neuschwanstein Castle Germany

Buckingham Palace England

Alhambra Spain

Tower of London England

Windsor Castle England

Kremlin Russia

Red Fort India

Topkapı Palace Turkey

So I could name recognise the top ten, and yeah I won’t argue too hard with the list, just apart from Neuschwanstein - but the second I saw it I realised I did not know the name but “Bavarian fairy castle” clearly deserves its ranking

BasieP2 today at 5:24 PM
Really luke it, but on mobile (firefox) the links (to wikipedia etc) just don't work..
pastemato today at 4:27 PM
Immediately curious about the concentration of castles on the Ghanaian coast. Wonder what that's about.
hurghada today at 4:40 PM
guyzero today at 4:34 PM
Interesting that in Canada Rideau Hall counts, but Casa Loma does not.
insane_dreamer today at 7:37 PM
Great project! Kudos to the designer.

Might need additional datasets though -- this one is lacking. only ~10 fortresses in France? LOL

The fortress / castle distinction is quite difficult and perhaps not useful? This map classifies the Crac (Krak) des Chevaliers[0], in modern-day Syria, as a "castle" but I would argue it's really a "fortress" (and in fact, one of the best preserved ancient fortresses in the world).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak_des_Chevaliers

onion2k today at 4:39 PM
Invading Australia is looking pretty tempting right now.
andsoitis today at 5:09 PM
Australia doesn’t have a single castle!
dolmen today at 4:58 PM
ChĂąteau de Saint-Cloud, near Paris, reported as "renowned ruin" ??? What a joke! Only the gardens remain.

Even more ridiculous : Bastille also reported as "renowned ruin". Nothing remains. All stones have disappeared centuries ago.

holoduke today at 4:47 PM
There are many castles near my parents house in france. I don't see any of them? AI generated?
BasieP2 today at 5:25 PM
Love it..

But the links don't work.

(firefox mobile)

philipwhiuk today at 6:36 PM
deleted today at 4:38 PM
sam_lowry_ today at 5:23 PM
Where is the castle of James Damore?
drstewart today at 5:09 PM
Tangential, but many of these aren't what people traditionally would think of as castles. Is there any consensus on what the "castliest of castles" is? Presumably something in the UK or Ireland or thereabouts considering that's where the popular media conception of them comes from.
dyauspitr today at 4:58 PM
Is a palace a castle? If so then there are a huge number missing in India.
hbcdbff today at 5:08 PM
Slop
shevy-java today at 5:18 PM
I mean, the reason why these dominate in Europe is because largely of the medieval era and a bit before that. Once gunpowder became more widely used, castles became increasingly obsolete. Nowadays they have only touristic value really or movie values, such as the castle in the movie Monty Python and the holy grail. Other than that they are just stone ruins really, some more polished than others. They have no real worth nowadays other than wonder how many resources went into building them.

Also, as others pointed out, the map is missing many castles. I also doubt the spread over China, the map only says about 7 castles in whole China? So that seems totally wrong. The definition for a castle must be incorrect, because Japan has attributed many more and that is simply objectively incorrect. Is the chinese palace classified as a castle? If not, why not? If yes then why not other palaces in China? The map is really not very good here. It should begin by a good definition of what is meant with a castle.

weezing today at 5:25 PM
Heavily lacking at least in Poland. Reeks clanker powered. I miss the times where actual hobbyists were doing stuff.