Chapter 27
In This Chapter
● Rounding up the ruins
● Checking out the medieval edifice complex
● Exploring still-standing defences
Much evidence of medieval life still exists today: documents, tombs, churches, statues and battlefields all remain. The most iconic and visible image of the Middle Ages, however, is the castle (check out Chapter 10 for more on medieval castle-building).
Hundreds of medieval castles still stand in one form or another all around Europe and beyond. In this chapter, I look at some of the greatest: all these buildings are open to visitors and are well-documented in books and online. That said, all castles are great for different reasons and definitely worth visiting.
Krak des Chevaliers, Syria
Very much the daddy of surviving medieval castles, Krak des Chevaliers is in a different league to almost anything else. From its dominant position on top of a 650-metre-high (2,100 feet) hill in a place called the Horns Gap, it guards the only route between Antioch and the ports on the Mediterranean Sea - a position of immense strategic importance.
Construction began on the site in 1031, when the Emir of Aleppo built a small fortress. Captured in the early twelfth century by the Crusaders, this building was given to the Knights of St John of the Hospital (known as the Hospitallers, who feature in more detail in Chapter 16) in 1142, and they spent 100 years expanding the castle into the immense form that it still displays today.
The castle is almost a small town, capable of holding a garrison of 2,000 and defended by a huge curtain wall, 30-metres (or 90 feet) thick, and with seven massive 9-metre (or 29 feet) wide guard towers. The structure also originally had a moat - as if it needed any more protection!
The Tower of London, London, England
The original tower, known as the White Tower, is the key architectural treasure here. William the Conqueror built the large keep in 1078. It features two floors, a basement and a gallery and contained everything for the king’s living quarters, including a chapel, a hall and a chamber for receiving guests and conferring with advisors. Quite a complicated building, the design was more akin to a comparatively modern construction like the White House in Washington than just a basic stone keep. After William, a great deal more building was done on the site and the White Tower is now just the central part of a much larger complex of buildings.
The White Tower, however, is also important because of what it represented as opposed to just what it contained. It was built as a clear statement to the people of England that they were now under the control of a new power, and the tower would have dominated the skyline for miles around. The White Tower was also used as a jail for important political prisoners and became greatly feared: the idea of being sent to ‘The Tower’ was absolutely terrifying throughout English history. Having said that, the first official prisoner escaped! In 1100, Henry I imprisoned the Bishop of Durham in the tower and he escaped using a rope that someone smuggled to him inside a pot of wine.
Tintagel Castle, Cornwall, England
Little remains of the actual building, but Tintagel in southwest England is still an incredibly evocative place for anybody interested in medieval history. Located on a small peninsula that sticks out into the sea, Tintagel really does feel as if it’s on the edge of the world. Originally a Roman settlement, the ruins that remain date back to a thirteenth-century building on the site.
Most people visit Tintagel, however, for completely different reasons: the castle has been associated for centuries with the legend of King Arthur. In the twelfth century the writer Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed that it had been the site of the castle of Uther Pendragon, who he identified as Arthur. As a result, when Richard of Cornwall built his castle on the site in 1233, he made sure that it was constructed in an older and more ancient style so that it fitted with the legend. Although the associations with Arthur are unlikely to be true, the legend just makes an already evocative place even more so!
Caernarfon Castle, Wales
Constructed by Edward I in the late thirteenth century, Caernarfon Castle is a whopping great statement of intent by an English king in northeast Wales. Edward finally put down the Welsh revolt in around 1283 and set about building a series of castles across the country so that he was able to maintain royal authority in the region. Caernarfon is by far the biggest and most impressive of these structures. It was also expensive, costing around £23,000 to build, which was the equivalent of the entire royal revenues for a year!
Construction began on the site in 1283 and carried on for more than 30 years. Edward died in 1307, long before the castle was even close to being completed. Even now it remains unfinished: you can still see gaps in large sections of wall that were left for joints from further walls to be put in. The design of the castle is interesting too. Edward I had been on Crusade (as I describe in Chapter 16) and liked the look of Constantinople and its city walls, and so he used them as a basis for the design of Caernarfon.
Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire, England
The Hundred Years’ War involved a lot of castle building throughout England, and not only because people feared a French invasion. Many of the commanders in the war had in fact made loads of cash from their campaigns and wanted to spend it on building imposing castles. Kenilworth Castle is a great example of this impulse.
Like many other structures from the period, a fortress already existed on the site in Warwickshire (in the centre of England). In the thirteenth century, it belonged to the rebellious Simon de Monfort (see Chapter 17). In 1364, however, John of Gaunt (who crops up in Chapter 22 about the Peasants’ Revolt) began to turn it into a true castle fit for a king, building a great hall to receive guests and expanding the lake that covered three sides of the building. The castle became a lavish and indulgent palace that changed hands many times over the following centuries. In 1575, Queen Elizabeth I visited the castle, at the time owned by Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. He entertained the queen incredibly lavishly, spending the modern-day equivalent of £180,000 on feasts and entertainments!
Bodiam Castle, East Sussex, England
The current building is another product of the Hundred Years’ War. It was begun in 1385 by Sir Edward Dalyngrigge, a knight of Edward III who had fought in France. Bodiam is worth mentioning because it’s a near perfect example of a castle built to a quadrangular, square plan. The structure is entirely symmetrical with outer walls built exactly around the inner courts.
Having made his fortune in the war, Dalyngrigge was given permission by the young King Richard II (flip to Chapter 22 for more on Richard’s reign) to turn his old fortified manor house in East Sussex, in the south of England, into a true castle, but Dalyngrigge didn’t mess around with renovations and instead built a completely new castle! The building is completely surrounded by a moat and no army was able to approach without being seen because of its excellent defensive location. Despite all this protection, or perhaps because of it, the castle has never been attacked.
Wartburg Castle, Eisenach, Germany
Possibly the most dramatic castle in Europe, Wartburg is a ruined medieval structure built over 300 metres (or 984 feet) above the nearby town of Eisenbach in Thuringia, central Germany. The original building was established in the middle of the eleventh century by the Count of Schauenburg, one of the rulers of Thuringia, and became the seat of power in the area for the next 400 years.
Even without its powerful associations, Wartburg is an amazingly dramatic place, hovering above the valley and accessible only by a drawbridge from the one road in. Anyone seeking access another way faces a bit of a climb!
Bizarrely for such an imposing building, it became a cultural centre and the venue for the Sangerkreig, a contest for minstrels dating back to 1207. Musicians flocked from all around Europe to sing at the castle. Records don’t indicate whether performers who displeased the judges were pushed off the walls!
Malbork Castle, Malbork, Poland
Like the Hospitallers and the Templars, the order of the Teutonic Knights (check out Chapter 16 for more) also built a huge number of castles. One of the most famous is Malbork Castle in the north of Poland, which was first constructed in around 1274 when the Teutonic Knights were in charge of the region then known as Prussia. The castle was a huge project and expanded
several times as new knights arrived after the fall of the Crusader states. It eventually became the largest fortified Gothic building in Europe. The nearly 52-acre site was entirely surrounded by walls and comfortably housed nearly 3,000 knights. Malbork became the dominant building in the region and hosted meetings of the Hanseatic League trade guild when it was founded in the fourteenth century.
Rather more sinister is the impression that Malbork made upon leading Nazis more than 500 years later. They decided that the castle was their ideal Teutonic fortress, and it hosted many Hitler Youth Camps.
Caerphilly Castle, Caerphilly, Wales
Caerphilly is a massive Norman castle in the south of Wales that remains in remarkably good condition. The castle - constructed between 1268-1271 by nobleman Guilbert ‘The Red’ de Clare, the Earl of Gloucester - is the second biggest castle in Britain (after Windsor Castle) and was built on an island in the middle of a dammed lake.
Caerphilly is a good example of a concentric castle. This type of castle is effectively a ‘castle within a castle’ - several rings of walls surrounding each other, sometimes without a keep. Not many of this type of castle survive in their original form, although Krak des Chevaliers (turn to the earlier section ‘Krak des Chevaliers, Syria’) is another good example. Visitors are always impressed by its famous leaning tower. Nobody is entirely sure whether subsidence or cannon-fire damage in the civil war caused this angle!
Guedelon Castle, Treigny, France
Guedelon is something else entirely - a brand new medieval castle! That may sound like a bit of a contradiction in terms, but it’s true. Guedelon is an archaeological project involving the building of a brand new castle in the style of the thirteenth century, using only tools and techniques that were available at the time as well as building materials available in the local area.
Construction began in 1999 in Treigny, Burgundy, and is scheduled to finish at some point in the 2020s. The team responsible hope that by carrying out the project, they can discover more about how medieval technology functioned as well as what life was like working on a project of this size and scale.
I can’t wait to see how this amazing project turns out. If you want to know more, check out the project’s website at www.guedelon.fr and see how they’re getting on!