Post 'em comfy historical ruins Veeky Forums. Catch is you have to explain how it became a ruin

Spiš castle in eastern Slovakia, originally built in the 12th century, it burned down in 1780 allegedly because the owner wanted to avoid paying taxes.

Another angle

Went through Slovakia last year. You motherfuckers have castles on every fucking hill there is!

Yes, most castles per capita in the world IIRC.

Had a girlfriend from Slovakia a while back, cool place and people but what you say is simply not true

England has over 1500 castles that’s a castle for every 30 000 people

Bulgaria has 3500 castles and that’s a castle for every 1714 people

France has over 20 000 castles

Germany has over 23 000

Italy is around the same number.

First of all Bulgaria has over 3500 fortresses which are NOT castles. That's 3500 sites in which a fortification was build. Out of those 3500 less than a 1500 have visible remains Out of those 1500 less than 20 have walls standing above 2 meters. The numbers you gave are arbitrary at best as no clear deffiniton of a "castle" exists. Where do you draw the line between a fort, fortress, fortification, fortified city and a castle and how do they make that number?

After googling some I saw claims about Slovakia, Czech republic and Wales having the highest per capita number. Not really that important anyway.

Bump

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

They're likely grade listed too making installing modern amenities impossible or very difficult at least.

Grad Kamen (literally the Stone castle) was built in the strategic position in front of the Draga valley. It changed many owners (among other the dynasties of Ortenburg, Lamberg and the counts of Cilli). The last owners were the Lambergs who moved to a different castle in the 17th century, using a lot of the material from Kamen to expand their new home.

The Château de la Mothe-Chandeniers is a former stronghold of the Bauçay family, lords of Loudun. The stronghold dates to the thirteenth century and was originally called Motte Bauçay (or Baussay). The Motte Baussay was taken twice by the English in the Middle Ages and devastated during the French Revolution.

It was bought in 1809 by François Hennecart, a wealthy businessman. In 1857 it was sold to Baron Joseph Lejeune. In 1932, a major fire destroyed most of the buildings in the castle.

In December 2017, 18,600 members of an online community raised €1,600,000, by paying at least €50 each, to purchase the castle with the aim of restoring it

depends on if you're actually trying to restore these, not just preserving or restoring/reconstructing

the costs would be astronomical which means (in OPs case) that Scotland would have to take direct control of it or allow a non-profit to take control of it as a landmark or historic building

i'm not sure how it works in Scotland but in the US that'd usually come as a grant and the non-profit would probably want to create some flow of tourism

there's no way realistically that any one individual would own it outside of some eccentric billionaire dumping his personal wealth into it

woops, meant preserving or restoring/reconstructing OR rehabbing

Very nice castle. Kamen is also being (slowly) restored (as you can see from the photo - the upper tower, the building at the bottom); the first restoration started in 1959. It was never destroyed by invading troops (as far as I know - many castles in the region were destroyed by Turks but I haven't heard anything about Grad Kamen).
Kamen was first mentioned in the 13th century although first construction took place several centuries earlier. Its position , as I've already mentioned, was of strategic importance - the great position on top of the hill overlooks the plains to the south and protects the valley to the north. Naturally, as time progressed, placement lost importance which is why it was finally abandoned for a nearby location, Grad Kacenštajn.

The castle was originally built as the main base of a robber baron but was later used as a key control center and a valuable asset for the lords of Holland and Gelre who would often get into conflict.

>with so much money
More like so little. He probably let it rot because he couldn't pay the money to restore it. Probably why it was being bet in the first place, the property was worthless without spending an insane amount of money to restore it.

Van Arkel did nothing wrong

>tfw we'll never see a societal collapse making castles a good defensive investment again

especially

That's beautiful.

Abandoned quarry in Wales.

Gorgeous, that's some Kaer Morhen-type fortification.

And moving it to the top of a skyscraper?

I had to look it up but now I remember someone made the comparison before.

>tfw my country consisted of barbarians that didn't build anything more advanced than a hut until the 1300s and all the fortifications are from 1600 or later

Appearantly a guy with way too much money built his own castle near where I love in the late 19th century. It was called Castle Ture (Tureborgen).

He regularly held feasts where they roasted whole pigs and drank mead from horns.

Then he died, his wife sold the place and this is what it looks like today.

>20000
>23000
Serious doubt.
As i recall, Czech republic then Wales have the most castles at 1500 and 600 respectively. Perhaps you're quite lenient on what constitutes a castle

...

>graffiti

A drawing of Öresten fortress by german mercenary Paul Dolnstein in 1502. The castle had been built to guard the Swedish-Danish border some time before 1366. It had been razed and rebuilt three times until 1521, when the peasantry (since they suffered the most whenever a foreign army laid siege to the castle) collectively bought it and tore it down.

Fucking barbarians tb h

>peasants blaming the fortress for attracting unwanted attention
Were they right?

>an army on the move can demand food from the villages they pass
>an army laying siege can only demand food from villages near the object they are laying siege to, for the entire duration of the siege
>this means that 5-10 villages will need to provide food for an entire army of several thousand
>there would also be idle soldiers up to no good in the villages
They were kind of right I suppose.

Pic related: a combination of lighting and the Eternal Frog.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidelberg_Castle

That is huge. Love those comfy houses right underneath, too

Kaer Morhen was inspired by Orava castle in Slovakia.

>tossa
very nice

i've been there plenty of times

Alright, I'll dump a few more Heidelberg photos then

This was the 'fat tower', whose other half was destroyed by the French in the 1690s.

View of the castle from one of the plazas in the city.

Close-up of one of the abandoned towers.

And the view of the city from the castle balcony.

It's always mindblowing how thick castle walls were

As much as I love this castle and I visited it many times it's location is absolutely retarded. It is literally surrounded by positions from which it can and was bombarded

Is that Nonsuch palace?

bruh that's clearly a religious building. Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in England.

Charles Fort, Cork, Ireland. Upgraded to astar fort to protect Kinsale from Napoleonic invasion.

The Spanish landed here during the 9 years war 1601, to aid the Irish but ultimately failed to take the fort and retreated.

It continued to be used as an English fort until 1921 with the Anglo - Irish treaty.

It was subsequently burned down by anti treaty forces during the Irish civil war in 1922

here again. I found some photos I took of Hitler's mountain home in Berchtesgaden.

Entrance to the underground bunker/service tunnels.

Graffiti on the walls left by US soldiers.

And the view from outside.