The atlas

Castle routes

22 routes, 415 stops, 407 landmarks — the castles that belong together, in the order you would travel them.

A country page tells you where the castles are. A route tells you which ones, in what order, and how far apart — because most of the great castle country in the world is a line rather than an area: a river the towers were built to tax, a border two kingdoms fortified against each other, one king’s building programme, one order’s brick.

Every route here is a real, named thing, and none of the stop lists is typed by hand where geography can decide it instead. Distances are straight-line, always, and every page says so.

Route	Countries	Stops	km
The Wachau and Danube castle routeMelk to Vienna	Austria	28	99
The Dalmatian fortress coastZadar to Dubrovnik	Croatia	14	296
The Bohemian castle routePrague to Český Krumlov	Czech Republic	28	193
The Northumberland castle coastNewcastle upon Tyne to Berwick-upon-Tweed	England	18	94
The Alsace castle routeWissembourg to Mulhouse	France	32	154
The Cathar castle routeCarcassonne to Foix	France	14	147
The Dordogne castle routeBergerac to Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne	France	14	116
The Loire Valley château routeAngers to Orléans	France	32	209
King Ludwig II’s castlesHohenschwangau to Herrenchiemsee	Germany	6	173
The Moselle castle routeTrier to Koblenz	Germany	27	112
The Rhine castle routeBingen to Koblenz	Germany	27	53
The Danube Bend castle routeEsztergom to Budapest	Hungary	18	62
The hill forts of RajasthanAmber to Jaisalmer	India	6	881
The Aosta Valley castle routeAosta to Ivrea	Italy	18	50
The Valley of the Seven CastlesKoerich to Mersch	Luxembourg	7	17
The Teutonic castle roadToruń to Malbork	Poland	9	453
The Transylvania castle routeBran to Cluj-Napoca	Romania	26	270
The Aberdeenshire castle trailStonehaven to Aberdeen	Scotland	18	149
The Castile castle routeValladolid to Madrid	Spain	28	248
The castles of the Andalusian frontierCádiz to Córdoba	Spain	30	406
The Crusader castles of the Levantthe Syrian coast to southern Jordan	Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan	7	504
Edward I’s ring of ironFlint to Beaumaris	Wales	8	175

Looking for an area rather than a line? See castles by region, the 148 countries on the map, or the day-trip guides for 407 cities.

Common questions

What is a castle route?

A stretch of country whose castles belong together — a river gorge whose towers were built to tax the traffic on it, a king’s building programme, a frontier, a UNESCO series. This atlas maps 22 of them, 415 stops in all, and puts the stops in the order you would travel them.

How are the stops chosen?

Two ways, and each route says which. Where geography decides — the Rhine gorge, the Moselle, the Aosta valley — every landmark in this atlas within a stated distance of the route’s line is a stop, in the order it sits along the line, and no editor picks them. Where the membership is the fact — Edward I’s eight Welsh castles, Ludwig II’s, the six Rajasthan hill forts UNESCO inscribed together — the stops are named.

Are the distances driving distances?

No. They are straight-line distances computed from the coordinates the atlas holds. Real roads, river crossings and mountain passes always add to them, and the atlas does not print a number it cannot compute.