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castle

Type of fortified structure built in Europe, Asia and the Middle East during the Middle Ages by nobility

Also known as medieval castle · Middle Ages castle

Instance of: type of building
Subclass of: fortification

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars usually consider a castle to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble. This is distinct from a mansion, palace, and villa, whose main purpose was exclusively for pleasance and are not primarily fortresses but may be fortified. Use of the term has varied over time and, sometimes, has also been applied to structures such as hill forts and 19th- and 20th-century homes built to resemble castles. Over the Middle Ages, when genuine castles were built, they took on a great many forms with many different features, although some, such as curtain walls, arrowslits, and portcullises, were commonplace.

Overview

All data

87 statements · 11% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

On other databases

60 identifiers linking castle across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

11%

externally sourced

Source last edited October 6, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). castle (Q23413). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/castle-Q23413