Castles
The château the fire left behind — and the 27,000 people who saved it
A 1932 blaze gutted it, the family never came back, and then strangers bought a castle.
Category · Châteaux, forts & palaces
Abandoned Castles
Châteaux, forts, palaces and manor houses — the most romantic and most photographed face of abandonment. Europe has thousands of them, and most empty out for the same handful of reasons.
7Documented places
4Countries
52Minutes of reading
2026Archive updated
The entries
Castles in the archive
Each entry covers the history, the present condition, and the ethics of visiting a place that is often both private property and public heritage.
Castles
Château de Noisy: the castle that became a legend
Fifty years of fairy-tale decay, a clock tower, and a demolition order nobody could stop.
Castles
Château Burrus: the tobacco baron's palace in Alsace
A neo-baroque palace built on tobacco money, later requisitioned by the SS — and now slowly coming back to life.
Castles
Pałac w Pielgrzymowie: a Polish palace emptied twice over
Grand residences across Poland were emptied twice: once by war, and again by the century that followed.
Castles
Bannerman's Castle: the arsenal on the Hudson
A Scottish immigrant built a fake castle on a New York island to sell surplus weapons — and the Hudson slowly took it back.
Castles
Boldt Castle: the monument to a love that ended
A hotel magnate built a castle shaped like a heart for his wife. When she died, he stopped — and never went back.
Castles
Hammond Castle: the inventor's castle by the sea
A radio pioneer with four hundred patents built himself a castle on a Cape Ann cliff — and filled it with the past.
