Castles & Palaces to Visit

1.Palace of Versailles

Versailles, France

The definitive royal palace: Hall of Mirrors, baroque grandeur and sprawling formal gardens that set the template every European monarch tried to copy.

2.Neuschwanstein Castle

Hohenschwangau, Germany

Ludwig II's fairy-tale fantasy on an Alpine crag, the storybook silhouette that inspired Disney's castle and draws millions yearly.

3.Forbidden City (Palace Museum)

Beijing, China

The largest palace complex on earth, 980 buildings of imperial Chinese power; nearly five centuries of emperors ruled from its vermilion halls.

4.Alhambra

Granada, Spain

The pinnacle of Moorish palace architecture: intricate stucco, reflecting courts and the Court of the Lions, a hilltop dream above Andalusia.

5.Château de Chambord

Chambord, France

The Loire's most extravagant Renaissance château, with a Leonardo-attributed double-helix staircase and a forest of 365 chimneys and turrets.

6.Edinburgh Castle

Edinburgh, Scotland

A fortress on an extinct volcano dominating Scotland's capital, home to the Crown Jewels, Stone of Destiny and the daily One O'Clock Gun.

7.Himeji Castle

Himeji, Japan

Japan's finest surviving feudal castle, the brilliant-white 'White Heron' keep, an immaculate UNESCO masterpiece of timber fortification.

8.Mont-Saint-Michel

Normandy, France

A medieval abbey-fortress rising from tidal flats, ringed by Europe's great tides; an unforgettable island silhouette and pilgrimage site.

9.Prague Castle

Prague, Czech Republic

The largest ancient castle complex in the world, crowned by soaring St. Vitus Cathedral and still the seat of Czech presidents.

10.Windsor Castle

Windsor, England

The world's oldest and largest occupied castle, a thousand-year royal residence with St. George's Chapel and the Changing of the Guard.

11.Tower of London

London, England

A Norman fortress-prison-palace on the Thames guarding the Crown Jewels, with ravens, Beefeaters and nine centuries of bloody history.

12.Mysore Palace

Mysore, India

An Indo-Saracenic riot of domes and stained glass; on festival nights nearly 100,000 bulbs illuminate the Wodeyar maharajas' seat.

13.Topkapi Palace

Istanbul, Turkey

The opulent Ottoman seat for four centuries, overlooking the Bosphorus, with the imperial harem, treasury and sacred relics of Islam.

14.Schönbrunn Palace

Vienna, Austria

The Habsburgs' 1,441-room baroque summer palace, where young Mozart performed and Marie Antoinette grew up, framed by glorious gardens.

15.Pena Palace

Sintra, Portugal

A wildly colorful Romanticist palace crowning Sintra's misty hills, mixing Moorish, Gothic and Manueline whimsy in candy-bright hues.

16.Bran Castle

Bran, Romania

The clifftop fortress marketed worldwide as 'Dracula's Castle,' a Gothic Transylvanian icon of turrets, secret passages and legend.

17.Château de Chenonceau

Chenonceaux, France

The graceful 'Ladies' Castle' arching across the River Cher on arched galleries, shaped by Diane de Poitiers and Catherine de' Medici.

18.Hohensalzburg Fortress

Salzburg, Austria

One of Europe's largest fully preserved medieval castles, looming over Salzburg's baroque spires and reachable by funicular.

19.Conwy Castle

Conwy, Wales

Edward I's mighty eight-towered fortress, the finest surviving link in his iron ring of Welsh castles, beside an intact medieval town wall.

20.Peles Castle

Sinaia, Romania

A jewel of Neo-Renaissance opulence in the Carpathians, the first European castle fully wired for electricity, lavishly wood-carved within.

21.Potala Palace

Lhasa, China

The Dalai Lamas' towering winter palace at 3,700 metres, a red-and-white fortress-monastery and the spiritual heart of Tibet.

22.Hampton Court Palace

London, England

Henry VIII's riverside Tudor palace with its great hall, hammerbeam roof, ghost stories and a famous historic hedge maze.

23.Palace of the Grand Master

Rhodes, Greece

A medieval Crusader fortress-palace of the Knights Hospitaller, crowning Rhodes' walled old town, a Gothic stronghold facing the Aegean.

24.Eltz Castle

Wierschem, Germany

A romantic medieval castle nestled in a forested valley, owned by the same family for 850 years and never destroyed, gloriously authentic.

25.Hohenzollern Castle

Bisingen, Germany

A neo-Gothic ancestral seat of Prussia's kings floating above the clouds on a lone Swabian peak, often wreathed in dramatic mist.

26.Château de Versailles' rival Fontainebleau

Fontainebleau, France

A royal residence for eight centuries of French monarchs, from Francis I's Renaissance gallery to Napoleon's farewell courtyard.

27.Amber Fort

Jaipur, India

A honey-hued Rajput hill fort of palaces and ramparts above Maota Lake, dazzling Sheesh Mahal mirror hall and grand elephant-gate ascent.

28.City Palace, Udaipur

Udaipur, India

A sprawling complex of cupolas and balconies rising above Lake Pichola, the romantic heart of India's 'Venice of the East.'

29.Palace of Knossos

Crete, Greece

Europe's oldest city and the labyrinthine Minoan palace of legend, with frescoed throne room and the myth of the Minotaur.

30.Buckingham Palace

London, England

The British monarch's official London residence, its balcony and red-coated guards among the most recognisable royal images on earth.

31.Frederiksborg Castle

Hillerød, Denmark

Scandinavia's grandest Renaissance palace, spread across three islets in a lake, now Denmark's lavish Museum of National History.

32.Predjama Castle

Predjama, Slovenia

The largest cave castle in the world, dramatically wedged into a cliff mouth, legendary refuge of robber-baron Erazem of Predjama.

33.Malbork Castle

Malbork, Poland

The largest brick castle on earth and the Teutonic Knights' colossal Gothic fortress-monastery on the Nogat River, a UNESCO giant.

34.Spis Castle

Žehra, Slovakia

One of Central Europe's largest castle ruins, a sprawling hilltop fortress whose dramatic silhouette dominates the Spiš plateau.

35.Krak des Chevaliers

Homs Governorate, Syria

The supreme Crusader castle, an immense concentric fortress T.E. Lawrence called the finest in the world; a masterwork of military design.

36.Matsumoto Castle

Matsumoto, Japan

The black-clad 'Crow Castle,' one of Japan's oldest original keeps, its dark timbers mirrored in the moat beneath the Northern Alps.

37.Gyeongbokgung Palace

Seoul, South Korea

The grandest of Seoul's Joseon royal palaces, with throne hall, lotus-pond pavilion and a colorful ceremonial changing of the royal guard.

38.Château de Carcassonne (Cité)

Carcassonne, France

A double-walled medieval citadel bristling with 52 towers, the most complete fortified city in Europe, like stepping into the Middle Ages.

39.Hofburg Palace

Vienna, Austria

The Habsburgs' vast winter palace and seat of empire for centuries, housing the Sisi Museum, imperial treasury and Spanish Riding School.

40.Bojnice Castle

Bojnice, Slovakia

A romantic neo-Gothic château styled on Loire castles, all pointed turrets and fairy-tale spires, one of Europe's most-visited romantic castles.

41.Chillon Castle

Veytaux, Switzerland

An island fortress on Lake Geneva's shore, immortalised by Byron's 'Prisoner of Chillon,' with the Alps mirrored in the water behind.

42.Stirling Castle

Stirling, Scotland

A great Renaissance fortress on a crag, key to Scotland's wars of independence and a favoured residence of the Stuart monarchs.

43.Castel del Monte

Andria, Italy

Frederick II's enigmatic octagonal castle, a perfect geometric crown on a Puglian hill, unique in medieval architecture and full of mystery.

44.Doge's Palace

Venice, Italy

The pink-and-white Gothic seat of Venetian power on St. Mark's Square, linked to its prison by the legendary Bridge of Sighs.

45.Wawel Castle

Kraków, Poland

Poland's royal heart on a Vistula hill, coronation site and burial place of kings, with a cathedral and a famous dragon's den below.

46.Castle of Good Hope

Cape Town, South Africa

The oldest surviving colonial building in South Africa, a star-shaped 17th-century Dutch fort and the cornerstone of Cape Town's history.

47.Mehrangarh Fort

Jodhpur, India

A colossal fort towering 120 metres over the 'Blue City,' with palace courtyards, ramparts and one of India's finest museums within.

48.Bahla Fort

Bahla, Oman

A vast mud-brick oasis fortress, one of Oman's oldest and a UNESCO site, its towers and walls rising from the date palms of the interior.

49.Osaka Castle

Osaka, Japan

Toyotomi Hideyoshi's mighty unifier's castle, a gold-trimmed keep on massive stone ramparts, ringed by moats and cherry blossoms.

50.Bodiam Castle

East Sussex, England

The quintessential moated medieval castle, perfectly symmetrical and mirrored in its broad water, looking exactly as a child draws a castle.

51.Caernarfon Castle

Caernarfon, Wales

Edward I's grandest Welsh fortress with polygonal towers, traditional investiture site of the Prince of Wales and a UNESCO landmark.

52.Leeds Castle

Kent, England

Called 'the loveliest castle in the world,' rising from two islands in a lake, a former royal residence of medieval English queens.

53.Kronborg Castle

Helsingør, Denmark

The Renaissance fortress guarding the Øresund, immortalised as Elsinore, the brooding setting of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

54.Palácio Nacional da Pena's neighbor Quinta da Regaleira

Sintra, Portugal

A mystical estate-palace of Gothic spires, hidden tunnels and an initiation well spiralling into the earth, drenched in esoteric symbolism.

55.Palace of Westminster

London, England

The Gothic Revival home of British Parliament beside the Thames, crowned by Big Ben's tower, a UNESCO icon of democracy.

56.Catherine Palace

Pushkin (Tsarskoye Selo), Russia

A bldue-and-gold Rococo summer palace of the tsars, home to the reconstructed Amber Room, the 'Eighth Wonder of the World.'

57.Peterhof Palace

Saint Petersburg, Russia

Peter the Great's 'Russian Versailles' on the Gulf of Finland, with a cascade of gilded fountains tumbling toward the sea.

58.Winter Palace (Hermitage)

Saint Petersburg, Russia

The opulent green-and-white Romanov palace on the Neva, now the State Hermitage, one of the world's greatest art museums.

59.Falkland Palace

Fife, Scotland

A Renaissance hunting palace of the Stuart kings with the world's oldest surviving real-tennis court still in play.

60.Charlottenburg Palace

Berlin, Germany

Berlin's largest and grandest palace, a baroque Prussian residence with sumptuous interiors and formal gardens, beautifully restored.

61.Drottningholm Palace

Stockholm, Sweden

The Swedish royal family's residence and 'Versailles of the North,' with a unique preserved 18th-century theatre and Chinese pavilion.

62.Royal Palace of Madrid

Madrid, Spain

Western Europe's largest royal palace by floor area, 3,000-plus lavish rooms of baroque grandeur, used for Spanish state ceremonies.

63.Alcázar of Seville

Seville, Spain

A stunning Mudéjar royal palace of tiled courtyards and gardens, Europe's oldest palace still in royal use, famed from screen and history.

64.Royal Palace of Caserta

Caserta, Italy

The largest royal palace in the world by volume, a Bourbon baroque colossus with a 3-km cascade garden, used as Star Wars' Naboo.

65.Blenheim Palace

Woodstock, England

England's only non-royal, non-episcopal palace, a baroque masterpiece, Churchill's birthplace, set in vast Capability Brown parkland.

66.Château de Pierrefonds

Pierrefonds, France

A spectacularly restored medieval castle by Viollet-le-Duc, the romantic ideal of a fortress and a frequent film and TV backdrop.

67.Warwick Castle

Warwickshire, England

A superbly preserved medieval fortress on the Avon with towering ramparts, a working trebuchet and a thousand years of pageantry.

68.Dover Castle

Dover, England

The 'Key to England,' a vast clifftop fortress guarding the Channel, with a Norman keep and WWII secret wartime tunnels beneath.

69.Trakai Island Castle

Trakai, Lithuania

A red-brick Gothic castle on a lake island, the romantic medieval seat of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, reached across a footbridge.

70.Castle of São Jorge

Lisbon, Portugal

A Moorish hilltop citadel crowning Lisbon, with sweeping ramparts and the finest panorama over the city and the Tagus estuary.

71.Citadelle Laferrière

Milot, Haiti

The largest fortress in the Americas, built by freed slaves atop a mountain after Haiti's revolution, a defiant symbol of liberty.

72.Hwaseong Fortress

Suwon, South Korea

A masterwork of 18th-century military architecture, nearly six kilometres of walls, gates and command posts, a UNESCO Joseon landmark.

73.Golconda Fort

Hyderabad, India

A massive granite fortress famed for its acoustics and the diamonds traded here, with ramparts climbing to a palace-crowned hill.

74.Red Fort

Delhi, India

The mighty red-sandstone Mughal palace-fort of Shah Jahan, from whose ramparts India's independence is proclaimed every year.

75.Old Town Hall's neighbor Hohenwerfen Castle

Werfen, Austria

A 900-year-old clifftop fortress in the Alps, complete with falconry displays, starring in 'Where Eagles Dare' and 'The Sound of Music.'

76.Marienburg Castle

Pattensen, Germany

A romantic neo-Gothic palace, a love-gift from a Hanoverian king to his queen, perched in forest with soaring towers and pinnacles.

77.Burg Hohenwerfen's rival Lichtenstein Castle

Honau, Germany

The 'fairy-tale castle of Württemberg,' a slender neo-Gothic jewel clinging to a sheer cliff edge above the Echaz valley.

78.Gravensteen

Ghent, Belgium

A moated medieval Counts' castle rising in the heart of Ghent, with stark stone keep, battlements and a grisly torture museum.

79.Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte

Maincy, France

The baroque masterpiece that inspired Versailles; its perfection so enraged Louis XIV he jailed the owner and hired its three creators.

80.Burghausen Castle

Burghausen, Germany

The longest castle complex in the world, a 1,000-metre ribbon of fortifications stretching along a ridge above the Salzach river.