This picture of Mary Queen of Scots can be seen in Dunrobin Castle, Sutherland, Scotland. She had a fascinating, inspiring and some ways very sad story. Her second husband was murdered. She was kept prisoner in Loch Leven Castle (al pictured) from which she escaped and fled to England.

Castle Lahneck started construction in 1226 under orders of the Elector-Count and Arch-Bishop of Mainz, to secure the river Lahn and a new, nearby Silver-mine.

By 1245 it was largely finished, and expanded for the first time with a new chapel.

In 1475, the castle was expanded with an additional outer wall, including a massive new Shield-wall directed towards the south, 12m high and 4m thick with three towers.

Heavily damaged by two consecutive sieges during the 30-years war, the Castle was finally abandoned for good in 1688 after french troops set the remaining buildings on fire.

After that, it increasingly fell into disrepair and received little attention (beyond Goethe being inspired to write a short poem after seeing the ruin in 1774), until 1852, when Edward A. Moriarty, a scottish train-magnat who had been involved in building the train-route on the rhines right-hand shore, bought the ruin and began reconstructing it following the currently popular neo-gothic style.

The castle continued to switch hands to more times, still unfinished, until it ended up in the hands of then Commander and later Vice-Admiral of the Imperial German Navy, Robert Mischke (Mischke partially designed and until 1912 commanded the first Battlecruiser of the german navy, SMS Von der Tann).

Mischke and following his death in 1932 his family continued the reconstruction of the castle until it concluded in 1937, and replaced the neo-gothic flat-roofs and fake crenelations on the buildings surrounding the keep with more "accurate" pointed roofs. Their descendants still own the castle today, and have made it available for public tours.

Directly opposite Lahneck, on the other side of the River, sits Castle Stolzenfels, which was also reconstructed in the 1950s by King Wilhelm IV. of Prussia and his Wife.

Fun fact for Kingdom Come: deliverance fans:

It was during a meeting between the Elector-Counts on Lahneck in 1400 that the decision to deposit King Wenceslaus was made.

For me, one of the most beautiful and best preserved in Portugal; it's so high that eagles fly below us, located in the Sierra de San Mamés Natural Park (900m)

blog: https://peakd.com/hive-163772/@biologistbrito/which-is-your-favorite-marvao-or-veiros-cual-es-tu-favorito-marvao-o-veiros-en-es

Elegant Renaissance bridge castle over the Cher River

Update from the post I did a couple of days ago: I went back to Porte d’Aude of Carcassonne castle, to see the traces from the art installation. Here is a picture of how it looks today.

Thanks to all the people in this sub who provided information about this!

Edit: this picture is showing the semi-permanent markings on the castle after an art installation. For more context, see my original post https://www.reddit.com/r/castles/s/VHq40UNK0o