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.
carra 1 hours ago [-]
I would take it as just rounding 2,435 -> 2,400. No big deal.
monknomo 36 minutes ago [-]
The point is not the rounding, it is that it is not counting a total number of castles, but rather some subset of 'significant' castles
deepvibrations 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah, actually a very cool idea. Hopefully somebody takes it and makes a greatly improved version, as execution is lacking here!
Romario77 2 hours ago [-]
not really castles - it includes palaces for examples and chateaus.
bootlooped 9 minutes ago [-]
I find the word "castle" can be a little vague, like with Neuschwanstein Castle, which is really more of a palace. I don't think it's worth battling too much about what is or isn't a castle. I don't think you could come up with one set of castles in the world that satisfies everybody.
Same for France and Spain, which is what I am familiar with. I am expecting it to be true all around.
The map of France shows maybe 100 castles? If you include castles, forts and chateaux (which it seems the map aims to do) France has around 45000 of them, including 15k medieval castles (military), an other 15k from the Renaissance period (mix of military and luxury), and 20k more recent ones (some military, many luxury type).
I know if at least 20 medieval castles within 1h of my hometown and not a single one is here.
For Spain maybe 10k to 20k castles and forts. Out of which at least 2500 genuine medieval castles (not just big houses with fortifications)
4ndrewl 25 minutes ago [-]
Missing all of the "moorish" forts in Andalusia...
dbspin 3 hours ago [-]
Seems like your map lists pre-historic ring forts, not castles?
I'm not sure what the 'official' definition of a castle is, but I personally wouldn't consider a crannóg or something like Dún Aonghasa a castle. Nor would I consider a stand alone tower house a castle, although they might (along with gate lodges and great houses), sometimes be colloquially referred to as castles.
Which would put the number of Anglo-Norman castles in Ireland much lower, probably something around 100.
xg15 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah, in the other direction, I see at least one WWII-era "pillbox" bunker in France (part of the Marginot Line?) listed as "fortress".
It's a nice idea, but the range seems extremely broad on the one hand but very incomplete on the other hand.
bluGill 2 hours ago [-]
I like the definition where castle is a fortress where a Nobel lives. Fort is where an army lives but no Nobel leader. Palace is where a Nobel lives but it isn't expected to withstand a siege
RugnirViking 2 hours ago [-]
*Noble. Alfred Nobel invented stable explosives and started a Norwegian prize for achievement in science. Nobles, however, were high ranked members of the feudal hierarchy, often passing their position on to their children.
RodGodKiller 2 hours ago [-]
Wasn’t he Swedish?
vidarh 1 hours ago [-]
Yes. All the prizes except the peace prize are awarded in Sweden. Norway was in a union with Sweden at the time the prizes were set up, but it's not definitely known why he chose the Norwegian parliament (via the Norwegian Nobel Committee) to aware the peace prize.
clickety_clack 56 minutes ago [-]
In the intro paragraph of the linked Wikipedia page: “Use of the term has varied over time and, sometimes, has also been applied to structures such as hill forts”.
Bedon292 2 hours ago [-]
The map has a category for fortresses too. Which are included in its total count of "castles". So it's seems reasonable to bring them up.
dbspin 2 hours ago [-]
Fair, I think the map is nonsense, but also the idea of 30K castles in Ireland is clearly untrue.
arethuza 3 hours ago [-]
Same for Scotland - there are 3 castles within 2 km of where I live, not including a couple of really old ruined hill-forts... which I don't think is an unusual density of these things for this part of the world.
Edit: And of course there is also the huge castle 13km away across the sea sitting on its volcanic plug and very visible from here.
tgdn 2 hours ago [-]
Same for France, many are missing
r721 10 minutes ago [-]
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.
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 Château category and yet many things with Château in their name are tagged as castles.
mr_toad 58 minutes ago [-]
In France castles are all called Châteaux.
ButlerianJihad 55 minutes ago [-]
What a coincidence! In France, all hats are called chapeaux!
mrjay42 1 hours ago [-]
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!)
The Rova of Antananarivo /ˈruːvə/ (Malagasy: Rovan'i Manjakamiadana [ˈruvᵊn manˌdzakəmiˈadə̥nᵊ]) 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.
Yhippa 1 hours ago [-]
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?
But to be fair they’re much less well known, and quite well concealed, and are partly on private land, with big fences, cameras and scary warning signs. Tourists don’t seem to be much interested in post-medieval fortifications.
yabones 2 hours ago [-]
It's probably somewhat regional, as the ones in Canada seem to have pretty good tourism interest, especially when they're right inside a city like Quebec and Halifax.
But we're also very starved for true "Medieval Castles" like Europe or east Asia, so we take what we can get!
prmph 2 hours ago [-]
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.
runxel 3 hours ago [-]
Very cool project, but obviously missing (too) many great castles. I'm not sure if that way of measuring popularity is really well done.
lujz 3 hours ago [-]
Missing a lot, at least three around my home town.
relevant_stats 2 hours ago [-]
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.
notorandit 31 minutes ago [-]
Italy, like Germany, Austria and maybe a few more European countries host more than 5,000 "castles".
CrzyLngPwd 31 minutes ago [-]
Since forts are included in the USA, there are loads of Napoleonic forts missing in the UK.
> Neither part of the monument's name is correct. ... was not a "castle" in the traditional sense, but instead may have functioned more like a "prehistoric high rise apartment complex".[8]
My understanding was always that aside from vanity castles like Craigdarroch (https://thecastle.ca) there aren't castles in North America because they're only practical in a pre-cannon world
bluGill 2 hours ago [-]
Castles are practical against cannons but only if built with thicker walls than typical.
I'm moderately disappointed that Fort Point in San Francisco isn't listed.
Things like Fort Dearborn in Chicago are listed, but all that remains is markers of the perimeter... while Fort Point is a structure that you can visit and walk around.
3 hours ago [-]
Brendinooo 2 hours ago [-]
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!
mr_toad 1 hours ago [-]
It also lists the Bastille, which was completely demolished and is now a public square.
deton3991 3 hours ago [-]
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.
New Zealand was colonised long after castles had become obsolete. There are a few remains of WWII coastal fortifications here and there, but they’re now obsolete too.
The Māori built thousands of hilltop fortifications with wooden palisades (Pā), but lacking metal tools they didn’t build with stone.
detritus 2 hours ago [-]
See, I'd class those as something like 'follies' or Whimsy, as they don't appear to be actual fortifications, rather forms of affectation.
That said, I'm not sure what definition or list this site uses - as others have already pointed out, there are loads of castle missing I can tell, just from a few that I've visited across Italy.
Isamu 3 hours ago [-]
The page does give a pointer to Wikidata, I for one would love to see your example included.
meerita 40 minutes ago [-]
Would be amazing to see which one of these are on sale.
jollyllama 3 hours ago [-]
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
Wrong title. Wrong not even by two orders of magnitude.
IncreasePosts 2 hours ago [-]
There are only 20 castles in the world?
modeless 3 hours ago [-]
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.
the111 2 hours ago [-]
It’s a Russia hoax.
samfar90 3 hours ago [-]
Clicking on full story doesn't do anything. It closes the popup (mobile android)
losteric 3 hours ago [-]
it's part of a webring of vibecoded slopsites
The_Blade 3 hours ago [-]
yes, webrings! time for a comeback. i just found an AI agent trained on AOL chat room materials out in the wild, way to go Bending Spoons
why do all the vibecoded slopsites have the same design? i feel icky when i visit one like eternal sunshine of the spotless vibe
allturtles 3 hours ago [-]
This dataset is bad. The North Carolina state capitol is a castle?
the__alchemist 1 hours ago [-]
Same reaction! I just drove by it... taking a careful note after seeing it in the article. It does appear a bit keep-like, but that's a stretch. Maybe if the surrounding roads were replaced with walls/battlements/ramparts and such?
makeusgreat 2 hours ago [-]
Hearst Castle Missing. Please add it, it’s probably the most famous castle in California.
the111 2 hours ago [-]
US is clearly underrepresented, if forts counts as castles, as it seams to do, why isn’t Fort Knox there? Probably the most defended fort in the country.
pizzathyme 3 hours ago [-]
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.
philipwhiuk 53 minutes ago [-]
I mean no, it's not.
Castle Sween was built in the 11th century (and might still not be the oldest).
Dalhousie Castle was built in 1247 and the oldest bit of the surviving castle is from the 15th century. Most of it is from the 17th century. The roof is post-2004.
The actual lesson is, if you want to leave a legacy, hope someone rebuilds it when it falls apart after you're gone.
lifeisstillgood 2 hours ago [-]
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 2 hours ago [-]
Really luke it, but on mobile (firefox) the links (to wikipedia etc) just don't work..
pastemato 3 hours ago [-]
Immediately curious about the concentration of castles on the Ghanaian coast. Wonder what that's about.
Svip 3 hours ago [-]
During the height of the Triangle Trade, Europeans built a lot of forts to protect their interests along the Gold and Ivory Coasts; why these forts are considered castles by this site is beyond me (just for clarification: a castle is a fortified private residence).
Edit: I now realise that the site specifically says "Map of the world's great castles & fortresses", so I guess the site considers them fortresses, not castles. I retract my snark.
jameshart 3 hours ago [-]
There is no taxonomy of these things you could make that will not cause some eyebrow raising choices.
It counts Clarence House in London in its top 100 as a world famous ‘palace’ - it’s a Georgian townhouse.
Age of sail trading post forts seem a relatively uncontroversial inclusion in comparison.
guyzero 3 hours ago [-]
The title of the page is "Map of the world's great castles & fortresses". So those are latter.
3 hours ago [-]
stevenjgarner 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
sebnukem2 2 hours ago [-]
The ones in the area where I used to live are all missing.
Château 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.
sam_lowry_ 2 hours ago [-]
Where is the castle of James Damore?
drstewart 2 hours ago [-]
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 3 hours ago [-]
Is a palace a castle? If so then there are a huge number missing in India.
holoduke 3 hours ago [-]
There are many castles near my parents house in france. I don't see any of them? AI generated?
hbcdbff 2 hours ago [-]
Slop
shevy-java 2 hours ago [-]
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 2 hours ago [-]
Heavily lacking at least in Poland. Reeks clanker powered. I miss the times where actual hobbyists were doing stuff.
Rendered at 19:35:36 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
"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.
The map of France shows maybe 100 castles? If you include castles, forts and chateaux (which it seems the map aims to do) France has around 45000 of them, including 15k medieval castles (military), an other 15k from the Renaissance period (mix of military and luxury), and 20k more recent ones (some military, many luxury type).
I know if at least 20 medieval castles within 1h of my hometown and not a single one is here.
For Spain maybe 10k to 20k castles and forts. Out of which at least 2500 genuine medieval castles (not just big houses with fortifications)
I'm not sure what the 'official' definition of a castle is, but I personally wouldn't consider a crannóg or something like Dún Aonghasa a castle. Nor would I consider a stand alone tower house a castle, although they might (along with gate lodges and great houses), sometimes be colloquially referred to as castles.
Surely a castle is a fortified building, specific to the middle ages. Wikipedia agrees - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle
Which would put the number of Anglo-Norman castles in Ireland much lower, probably something around 100.
It's a nice idea, but the range seems extremely broad on the one hand but very incomplete on the other hand.
Edit: And of course there is also the huge castle 13km away across the sea sitting on its volcanic plug and very visible from here.
>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
There is no definition of what they use to categorize anything either. And it clearly isn't applied consistently. There is a Château category and yet many things with Château in their name are tagged as castles.
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!)
The Rova of Antananarivo /ˈruːvə/ (Malagasy: Rovan'i Manjakamiadana [ˈruvᵊn manˌdzakəmiˈadə̥nᵊ]) 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.
Side question: why does Claude prefer dark backgrounds with low-contrast text?
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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
Bran Castle: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q390275
Citadel Hill: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q321867
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_Western_Heights
But to be fair they’re much less well known, and quite well concealed, and are partly on private land, with big fences, cameras and scary warning signs. Tourists don’t seem to be much interested in post-medieval fortifications.
But we're also very starved for true "Medieval Castles" like Europe or east Asia, so we take what we can get!
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.
I checked my local area, and it omits interesting castles, instead including palaces, landmarks and world war era fortresses.
Shameful submission.
Plymouth is surrounded by them.
> Neither part of the monument's name is correct. ... was not a "castle" in the traditional sense, but instead may have functioned more like a "prehistoric high rise apartment complex".[8]
My understanding was always that aside from vanity castles like Craigdarroch (https://thecastle.ca) there aren't castles in North America because they're only practical in a pre-cannon world
That one you linked definitely merits inclsion, tho. Had never heard of it. Thanks.
Edit: Or maybe not: apparently it's not considered a castle, despite the name.
Things like Fort Dearborn in Chicago are listed, but all that remains is markers of the perimeter... while Fort Point is a structure that you can visit and walk around.
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!
Brazil also has a few castles, although not sure if they are classified differently -- https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_castelos_no_Brasil
The Māori built thousands of hilltop fortifications with wooden palisades (Pā), but lacking metal tools they didn’t build with stone.
That said, I'm not sure what definition or list this site uses - as others have already pointed out, there are loads of castle missing I can tell, just from a few that I've visited across Italy.
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44948352
why do all the vibecoded slopsites have the same design? i feel icky when i visit one like eternal sunshine of the spotless vibe
If you want to leave a legacy, build something out of stone.
Castle Sween was built in the 11th century (and might still not be the oldest).
Dalhousie Castle was built in 1247 and the oldest bit of the surviving castle is from the 15th century. Most of it is from the 17th century. The roof is post-2004.
The actual lesson is, if you want to leave a legacy, hope someone rebuilds it when it falls apart after you're gone.
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
Edit: I now realise that the site specifically says "Map of the world's great castles & fortresses", so I guess the site considers them fortresses, not castles. I retract my snark.
It counts Clarence House in London in its top 100 as a world famous ‘palace’ - it’s a Georgian townhouse.
Age of sail trading post forts seem a relatively uncontroversial inclusion in comparison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_Frontenac
But the links don't work.
(firefox mobile)
Even more ridiculous : Bastille also reported as "renowned ruin". Nothing remains. All stones have disappeared centuries ago.
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.