Castlemap is a new and free interactive tool mapping a selection of the most noteworthy castles and palaces across the world. Users can easily hoover across the map to find the best spots near their home or holiday location.
Castles are something most people have dreamt about at least once in their life. Their thick walls, their sheer scale, their well-kept secrets, and their centuries-old histories are as mysterious as they are intriguing.
When travelling, castles and palaces therefore make for a perfect sightseeing activity. Yet knowing where to find the best ones can be quite challenging, as they are not always easy to spot on a regular map. The new Castlemap solves that issue by providing a map showing a selection of the most noteworthy castles and palaces across the world.
Contrary to some maps that can be bought at local tourist information desks, Castlemap is freely accessible online and can even be downloaded. All information features on the map comes from open data: facts, coordinates, and founding dates from Wikidata, photographs from Wikimedia Commons, stories from Wikipedia, and the night basemap from OpenFreeMap and Natural Earth.
Data selection
At the moment, it features 7,045 notable landmarks across 141 countries. The developer selects the most significant landmarks worldwide based on a fame ranking that blends Wikipedia coverage with real readership. Those who wish to see another castle featured on the map can increase its chances by improving its Wikidata entry. Well-documented sites join the atlas at the next refresh and the correction helps everyone else who uses the same open data. According to Castlemap, whether or not a spot is featured on the map is not a verdict on a castle’s importance, only on how well the open data describes it so far.
Castlemap classifies the castles and palaces as follows:
- Castle & château: a fortified residence. Someone lived there, and it was built to be held.
- Fortress & fort: built for a garrison rather than a household – citadels, star forts, coastal batteries.
- Palace & residence: a grand residence with no serious defensive purpose.
- Ruin: not a fourth kind of building but a state. It shows any building included in the other three categories that no longer stands as it was, including sites that have vanished completely.
At the moment of writing, those who are looking to visit any of the above are best off going to Spain. With 500 listings, the country comes out at the top of the ranking. Germany (477) and France (465) come next in a list that is clearly dominated by Europe. One exception, however, is Japan. The country is featured no less than 298 times on Castlemap.
The interactive map also has quite an entertaining feature. With Castleguesser, users are challenged to recognise any of the castles on the map based on a single picture. The perfect game for a rainy night at home and one that could easily be integrated into a history quiz.
