Castles, palaces and fortresses
worth the journey
A catalogue of 1,578 buildings in 86 countries. Each entry says what the visit is actually like, when to go, and — where anything is bookable at all — which ticket or tour is the right one.
Start with a country
The ones most people book
Ordered by how many tours and tickets are sold for the building itself, not for the town around it.
Forbidden City
BeijingEverything sold here is a ticket in one form or another — all 187 bookable options run through admission, and 131 of…
Palace of Versailles
Île-de-FranceVersailles is sold from Paris, not from Versailles — the town has its own station but almost every one of the 142…
Louvre Castle
Île-de-FranceRead the tour names carefully before booking: all 154 options here are sold as Louvre Museum tickets, because the…
Prague Castle
PraguePrague Castle is not one building but a walled district — cathedral, palace, basilica, lane of small houses — and the…
Summer Palace, Beijing
BeijingAll 137 options are admission of one kind or another, and 83 are about the Summer Palace itself rather than a wider…
Sintra National Palace
Greater LisbonThis is the palace in the middle of Sintra town, the one with the two enormous white chimneys, and it is the easiest of…
Belém Palace
Greater LisbonOne thing to be clear about before booking: almost nothing sold here is a tour of Belém Palace.
Pena Palace
Greater LisbonPena is the busiest single monument in Sintra and the ticketing is built around that: 117 bookable options, 75 of them…
By what it is
- Castles 884
- Palaces 361
- Châteaux 217
- Fortresses 116
By when it was built
- High Medieval 204
- Modern 120
- Baroque 112
- Renaissance 100
- Early Medieval 17
Before you plan anything
Which of these can you actually go inside?
Of the 1,578 buildings in the catalogue, 621 have tours or tickets sold for them. A good many of the rest are open at the door without booking, and a large number — private houses, town halls, army headquarters, ruins on a hillside — are not enterable at all. Every entry says which it is in its first line rather than at the bottom of the page.
What is the difference between a castle, a palace and a château?
A castle is a fortified residence. A palace is a residence built for display and government, with no defensive purpose. A château is a French or German country seat whose towers, after about 1500, are decoration. English calls all three "castle", which is why this catalogue separates them: they are different buildings and different visits.
Do castle tickets need booking in advance?
For a handful, yes and firmly: the Alhambra's Nasrid palaces are timed to the half hour and sell out weeks ahead, and Versailles, Neuschwanstein and the Sintra palaces all run on timed entry. For most of the catalogue the answer is no — you pay a few euro at a desk. The pages that need advance booking say so explicitly.
Which country has the most?
Italy, with more entries here than any other country — though fewer than a hundred of them sell a ticket, because Italian castles are mostly municipal buildings still in use. France, Spain, the United Kingdom and Germany follow. The United Kingdom has the highest share of buildings you can actually buy a ticket for.
Is it cheaper to buy at the gate?
Usually, if there is a gate to buy at. What is sold online is frequently not the ticket but the transport and the queue — a day trip from Lisbon to Sintra or from Paris to Versailles is mostly a coach seat. Where that is the case, the entry says how long the tour actually leaves you inside the building.
How this catalogue is written
It says when there is nothing to book
Of the 1,578 buildings here, 621 have tours or tickets sold for them. The rest are private, ruined, in use as offices, or simply free to walk up to — and their pages say so in the first line rather than burying it under a booking widget.
Numbers, not adjectives
How many of the options are day trips, how long they leave you inside, how many steps there are, whether the ticket is timed. Where sources disagree, the range is given. Where a fact is missing from the record, that is said plainly instead of filled in.
Disputes are left as disputes
Contested names, contested histories and contested restorations appear with both positions and no verdict from us. A guide that quietly picks a side on someone else's argument is not more useful — only less trustworthy.