The most beautiful castles in the world

The legacy of the Middle Ages, European castles today are shrouded in a veil of legends, traditions and real dramatic events. Their thick stone walls remember sieges, internecine wars, intrigues and romantic stories. Their sumptuous or, on the contrary, ascetic interiors excite the imagination, which, having played out, takes away into the world of the knights of King Arthur, Lohengrin and Dracula. And, in general, at this moment it doesn’t matter whether these characters actually existed.

Today, the castles store unique exhibits that are of interest to culturologists and historians. For example, in the Japanese castle of Inuyama, standing on the banks of the Kiso River, considered one of the oldest in the country, a unique collection of weapons and armor used by real samurai is now assembled. You can find such artifacts far from everywhere. But in the museum organized here, they are securely kept by its caretakers.

But not all castles, which attract thousands and millions of tourists a year, were built in the Middle Ages. There are also modern record holders. For example, in the USA in Orlando (Florida) stands the world-famous Cinderella Castle. The construction of the second half of the 20th century is one of the main attractions of the most popular Walt Disney Park in the world.

Not only European, Asian and American cities are famous for their castles. There are unique buildings in Africa. The city of Cape Coast in Ghana has one of the oldest castles on the continent. It has the same name as the city and attracts many tourists, as it houses the world’s largest museum of the slave trade.

Bran Castle, Transylvania, Romania

Bran Castle, 30 kilometers from the city of Brasov, is one of those places whose mythological history has overshadowed the real one, I must say, very rich. Thanks to the novel by the Irishman Bram Stoker, published in 1897, Bran became “the same” castle of Count Dracula, the most popular bloodsucker of mass culture and the main vampire of all times and peoples.

Yes, there is a deadly negative charm in this image: “He had an energetic, original face, a thin nose and some special, strangely shaped nostrils; an arrogant high forehead, and hair that grew scantly and at the same time in thick tufts near the temples; very thick, almost meeting on the forehead eyebrows.

The mouth, as far as I could see under the heavy moustache, was resolute, even cruel in appearance, with extraordinarily sharp white teeth protruding between the lips, the bright color of which struck with its vitality in a man of his age.

But what struck me the most was the unusual pallor of the face. However, one should not associate Stoker’s Dracula with his prototype, the 15th-century Wallachian prince Vlad the Impaler, also known as Vlad Dracula. Although the governor did not differ in special humanity, he was not a bloody despot, as he appears in the annals, either.

The executions of the boyars after Tepes came to power in Transylvania – quite in the spirit of that by no means vegetarian time and internecine struggle, he himself was also attempted more than once. Vlad Dracula has an indirect relationship to Bran Castle: dissatisfied with the refusal of the German merchants of Brasov to obey the trading rules established by him, he repeatedly organized military campaigns against the obstinate city. However, no written evidence of his capture of the castle has been preserved.

Chillon Castle, Montreux, Switzerland

Unlike Bram Stoker, who used some of the features and fragments of the biography of Vlad Dracula to create an image, Byron in The Prisoner of Chillon poeticized the real story of a prisoner of a gloomy castle on the shores of Lake Geneva.

The basis of the poem, written by him in two days in June 1816, based on fresh impressions from visiting this place with his friend Percy Bysshe Shelley, was the events of the 16th century. The prototype of the Chillon prisoner was the rector of one of the Geneva abbeys, Francois Bonivard, who opposed the persistent attempts of the Savoy Duke Charles III to seize power in Geneva.

Bonivar spent six years in captivity and was released in 1536 by the Bernese. In fairness, in the centuries-old history of the castle, built in the middle of the XII century as the residence of the Savoy dukes, there were many dramatic episodes.

So, in 1798, under the influence of the French Revolution, the French-speaking canton of Vaud, refusing to recognize the authority of the German-speaking Bern, proclaimed the Leman Republic. When French troops entered the canton, to which its inhabitants turned for help, the Chillon castle was turned into a warehouse of weapons and uniforms.

Abbey of Mont Saint Michel, Normandy, France

According to legend, the abbey on a rocky island at the mouth of the Cusnon River owes its appearance to St. Michael, who in 708 appeared three times to Bishop Ober, until he was finally convinced of the correctness of his interpretation of the sign from above.

Since then, the mountain, called the Grave, bears the name of its heavenly patron – Mont Saint-Michel. In the 8th century it all started with a modest chapel, in 966, on the orders of the Norman duke, a proto-Roman church appeared here, and over the course of the 11th-15th centuries the abbey was gradually expanded and rebuilt, including due to the destruction caused by a series of wars.

In 1090, the abbey, in which the youngest son of William the Conqueror Henry took refuge, was besieged by his brothers William the Red and Duke of Normandy Robert Short Pants. At the beginning of the 13th century, the abbey was captured by the French king Philip Augustus, who, however, in expiation of his guilt before the monks and God, donated a large amount to the affected Benedictine monastery, thanks to which the Miracle was erected on the northern slope – a building in the Gothic style with an extensive cloister.

During the French Revolution and the Second Empire, the abbey also served as a prison, and today Mont Saint-Michel, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is one of the most touristic places in France. Its outlines can be seen in many films, including Terence Malick’s To the Miracle (2012), which begins with a visit to the abbey by a couple in love going through a relationship crisis.