six castles I would live in · five of them won't have me
Medieval castles are architecture with a threat model. Every wall answers a specific way of being attacked, and you can read the century off the shape of a tower. These six are my favourites.
The concentric castle at its most complete: a ring inside a ring, a sloped talus you cannot mine, and a covered ramp that turns back on itself. It fell to Baibars in 1271, and by surrender rather than by breach.
ENTERRichard I put it up in about two years on a chalk spur over the Seine, and was pleased enough to call it his saucy castle. Philip II took it in 1204 anyway, after a siege that lasted through the winter.
ENTEREdward I's statement piece, laid out by Master James of St George. The polygonal towers and banded stone are quoting the walls of Constantinople — a conquest castle that wanted to be read as imperial.
ENTERBuilt for Enguerrand III, whose donjon — 55 m tall and 31 m across — was the largest in medieval Europe. The Coucy family motto skipped the titles they didn't have and ended, simply, "I am the lord of Coucy."
ENTERTwo full rings of wall with a killing ground between them, on foundations the Romans laid. Viollet-le-Duc restored it from 1853 and gave the towers their pointed roofs, which is either vandalism or a gift depending on the century.
ENTERThe Teutonic Order's headquarters from 1309 and the largest castle on earth by land area — three castles in one, and all of it brick, because northern Poland had clay where everyone else had quarries.
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