Interactive map of the world's castles, fortresses, palaces and ruins

The Castle Map is an interactive atlas of the world's greatest strongholds, featuring (at press time) 1,706 castles, 543 fortresses, 760 palaces and 682 ruins. They are further filterable by "fame ranking," with 100 in the top category, and by their date of construction (going back to ~3000 BC's Aniba fortified village.)

Castles are all over the place, with Europe and Japan having the lion's share, at least of the data so far collated. Fortress fans have the Balkans, Caucasus, Levant and India to explore; Palaces galore are in France and Germany. If you like ruins, you can't move in England without tripping over one. Just watch out for ghosts.

Casually poking around for the most remote places, I find Fort Conger in Nanvut, Chile's Fuerte Bulnes and the Faroe Islands' Skansin between Britain and Iceland. Canada's Prince of Wales Fort in Manitoba is the only one on the frontiers that I fancy defending against whatever might be out there.

The newest entry is Vladimir Putin's palace near Gelendzhik in Russia, built for the chinless poisoner in the 2000s.

The site uses information from Wikidata and mapping tech from OpenFreeMap/OpenStreetMap. If the site is vibework, it demonstrates a good use for the technology-trains, sunshine, sunny beaches!-notwithstanding a fundamental problem.

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