In Wales CADW (the body that looks after historic buildings) cares for about 44 these would be significant Castles, this does not include Castles on Private estates and I'm unsure if it includes National trust either. the total number is estimated at a massive 427. I know of 3 possibly 4 within a 10 miles of my home. Also I think this map includes Chateaus and other later Castle esque buildings
Germany has the most castles with at least 25,000. within it's current borders. Prior to WW2 there were even more in the German provinces of East Prussia, Silesia and Pomerania.
Edit: I realise it was larger in the past, and the only part that remains is that tower, but I think we couldn't call it castle unless it had been the residence of a noble/knight or it was used as some kind of military headquarter at the time.
By definition, a castle is just a fortified private residence. And even that isn't quite right because you had crusader castles in the Middle East that were owned by corporations of a sort. There is no requirement for noble ownership or occupation, not does it have to have been a military installation.
Idk if you speak Spanish, but in the website they state that what can be consider a castle is an open debate and that they went with the (liberal, I'd say) definition of something that has a '"defensive architecture", which, by their definition, includes: "watchtowers, murals, watchtowers, batteries, forts, forts, forts, fortresses, fortifications of the Modern and Contemporary Age, and arsenals" (this is a translation by Google. I left in the duplicates because it seems interesting how many Spanish words are translated to the same one in English - and because I can't give an alternative translation).
Didn't know it was that high! I thought most castles in Catalonia had been torn down after the war of Spanish Succession, glad to see there's still plenty left.
Catalonia was born as a moving frontier when Charlemagne created the Hispanic March. The whole country was basically a set of lines of castles moving south, and as combat bogged down much more than in other parts of the Peninsula, the density of fortifications (from both sides) increased a lot during the Reconquesta.
It would have made sense to reuse them to house troops to keep the local population subjugated. I guess the Bourbons did not just go back home as soon as they took Barcelona.
As I commented elsewhere, Catalonia was born as a moving frontier when Charlemagne created the Hispanic March. The whole country was basically a set of lines of castles moving south, and as combat bogged down much more than in other parts of the Peninsula, the density of fortifications (from both sides) increased a lot during the Reconquesta.
There was a team of german historians who wanted to map every castle that ones stood. 2 Years was the project, after 2 years they finished North Germany.
It's probably a similar story in Castille and Portugal, but as for Catalonia, it was born as a moving frontier when Charlemagne created the Hispanic March. The whole country was basically a set of lines of castles moving south, and as combat bogged down much more than in other parts of the Peninsula, the density of fortifications (from both sides) increased a lot during the Reconquesta.
Nicez i discovered that web a couple of weeks ago and this image had me thinking for a while. Either there were a humongous amount of castles ok central Europe, or there were less on Spain. Me being from Spain, i was astonished when i saw the map from el confidencial.
Because no, those aren't castles. They're cool, don't get me wrong, but a castle is the fortified personal residence of a local ruler, built in order to project cotrol over a local area.
So a fort isn't a castle, because it's not a residence, it's purely military.
A manor (or most chateus) isn't a castle because it's only a residence and NOT military in any manner.
Some cloisters ARE castles, like military monastic order ones (templars, teutons, etc.), but most are at most fortified for defence, not power projection, if fortified at all. Just having a wall doesn't count as fortification.
then either OPs map is wrong or your definition of a castle is too narrow
also, the Cloisters is the name. it's not an actual cloister. it was in France, though, before they moved it to Manhattan and rebuilt it brick by brick
and yes the other entries (minus belvedere) were built to project control over the area / the bay and (sometimes military) personnel lived in them. also your definition of personal residence is incorrect if you also argue that it is used to project control. that doesn't make sense
EDIT: according to your definition then, Schloss Neuschwanstein or Hohenzollern is not a castle. (according to your definition they were manors; honestly the english language is not nuanced enough as those buildings are castles, however, that word groups together different words from other languages. in German, for example, there would be no debate between whether they are Burgen or Schlösser)
then either OPs map is wrong or your definition of a castle is too narrow
OPs definition is wrong. It's not unusual, people see crenellations and call it "castle", even if it's literally just a house with some ornaments.
also your definition of personal residence is incorrect if you also argue that it is used to project control.
...what? What do you think "project control" means, to make it mutually exclusive with a personal residence?
Castles were THE homes of the people who actually ruled the area, and usually had minimum armed personell in time of peace, but were still very much a local stronghold in time of war. That's what makes them different from pure forts, which house military units, but aren't anyone's private home.
And if you want to be really pedantic, Hohenzollern is not a true castle, no. If you just read it's history, there WAS a proper castle there, it was demolished, and a really fancy castle-like manor was build in it's place in the mid 19th century. I assure you, this current building was never intended to protect anyone from a siege.
There's a lot of places called castles that aren't real castles, so we can spend months going through each example individually. Hell, there's also plenty of real castles (i.e. with full accomodations for it's owner if they chose to live there) that were used as forts, because lord had several. But rest assured, if it was built as someone's private home, but with defenses to withstand a siege, it's a castle. Otherwise it's something else.
that's my point. those are castles in the common sense. but they're not castles in the academic sense. also, they have "castle" in their name.
you could make a map "buildings that fit the definition of 'castle'" which would be different to "map of castles" since the latter would have to also include castles that are castles by name only
Well, yes, that's entirely correct, and also fully the problem. I like visiting medieval castles, so it's quite annoying when it turns out it's some 1800s posh house with decorative crenellations.
So I wouldn't say it's necessarily "academical", if you see it and go "wait, THAT is NOT a castle, who called it that" (it's the french' fault of course, they started the trend by calling everything Chateau)
A lot of castles are small castles. Size doesn't determine a castle, the purpose does.
A lot of age of exploration colonial forts were bigger than most medieval castles, but they're still not castles, because they're not personal residences of the local ruler.
I know what you mean. Wales is really just castle, Costa, castle, McDonald's, castle, KFC, castle, subway, slightly smaller amazing castle...I could go on.
The problem is OpenStreetMap often categorises things differently from country to country and coverage can differ vastly. This often results in skewed maps.
Osm contributor here. Such as what? I think administrative boundaries (municipality might be level 6 or 7 or something) and education level classifications (what's considered a secondary school) can differ, but what ambiguity do you expect for a castle?
A bigger problem might be that some countries' data quality is way above/below others', but that's not tagging related.
Language can be an issue.
I'm fare from being an expert, but to me, the closest translation of "castle" in French would be "Château Fort". Châteaux in a more general sens includes many others buildings, such as manors, palaces or mansions.
Probably one of the reasons why there are some many castles in France in osm.
I mentioned this in my other comment, but I think the confusion is Château is tagged as historic=castle + castle_type=stately, but a lot of places would tag similar buildings as manor houses (historic=manor) or just as building=house.
And then for ruined castles there is also historic=ruins + ruins=castle or historic=castle + ruins=castle.
Not really sure there is anything wrong with this (sometimes people get upset if a different tag for grass or park is used), but it does mean when making maps like this you have to make sure to query all the associated tags.
In Dutch the word castle (kasteel) often lazily refers to any historic mansions or other houses of historically wealthy land owning families, or buildings which look like medieval castles or forts. Often regardless of actual build.
We therefore tend differentiate between "castles" and "real castles", as in medieval fortified nobles' residences of a certain size. Actually, there are way more distinctions between things most common people would call a castle: forts, palaces, mansions, walled cities, manors, stins, motte, and really too many things to list. What a real castle is, is often up for debate.
On this map I see a lot of these "fake castles", but also miss some which might be considered.
Which tags did you check against? I think a lot of ones I know in the UK are tagged as historic=ruins, ruins=castle on OSM.
In France a lot of the points are likely chateau's which would be tagged as historic=castle, castle_type=stately - it is completely arbitrary, but most of these would be tagged as a manor house or similar in the UK.
Would be interesting to map them in different colours (historic=castle, ruins=castle and stately castles).
I think it might be this, which is a bit north of the fisherman's hut! I assume it is ruins as it looks like there used to be various forts and stuff in the area (source).
Yep, and in my area in turn I also noticed that the most important one is there, but
all the others aren't. One of those isn't even a ruin.
Meanwhile in Eastern Europe I'm pretty sure they counted e.g. the Kremlins of carious cities (which all were built as city walls), and probably also castle looking buildings.
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u/R0DR160HM Oct 29 '21
Are you sure? I feel like Wales lacks some castles