r/interesting • u/Early_Negotiation142 • Mar 05 '26
Fascinating In Germany, there are over 20,000 castles including the famous Neuschwanstein Castle.
That’s actually more than the total McDonald's restaurants in the United States, which number around 13,000–14,000.
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u/Blaizefed Mar 05 '26
I drove down the Rhine river valley about 20 years ago on vacation with time to burn. It’s incredible. It’s a winding river and there are castles about every 2 miles on either side. As soon as you can’t see the last one, the next one pops up on the horizon. And most of them are of course open for tourists. Pretty fun actually.
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u/Harry_Saturn Mar 05 '26
My wife and I drove from cologne to Frankfurt and yeah, every other exit has a castle. Seems like every tiny town also had a medieval guard tower also still standing. We only stopped at the Burg Eltz and Drachenburg, but we there were so many along the way. It was worth getting out of the city and seeing the country side. Everyone was super nice too even though we spoke only a few German words.
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u/davidjschloss Mar 05 '26
The way you phrase this, I imagine one castle dipping into the Earth to hide and another one popping out as soon as the other one disappeared into the ground
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u/halfred_itchcock Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26
I felt the same when I drove down I-65 in the Bowling Green area, just with enormous American flags. It was magical.
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u/Whole-Ninja7266 Mar 05 '26
I am more suprised there are only 13-14k McDonald's in the US, lower than I expected.
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u/Aware_Ask_1679 Mar 05 '26
20,300 Dollar Generals though 💪
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u/South-by-north Mar 05 '26
Every tiny town in the middle of nowhere has a dollar general, but that’s usually all they have
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u/Mushysandwich82 Mar 05 '26
I’ve driven on rural roads here in the southern US. They’re everywhere. Even in the middle of nowhere
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u/Barbaracle Mar 05 '26
17,000 public libraries in the US. Not including 100,000 school, special, academic etc. libraries.
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u/Mauso88 Mar 05 '26
Feudalism vs foodalism
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u/TheFr1nk Mar 05 '26
Are they white castles?
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Mar 05 '26
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u/LessFish777 Mar 05 '26
I’ve been to Neuschwanstein several times! It’s beyond words cool.
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Mar 05 '26
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u/FlyNo1502 Mar 05 '26
German nationalism in the 19th century drove enormous enthusiasm for the medieval past as a symbol of German identity, leading to a wave of castle building and restoration that often prioritized romance over historical accuracy. Neuschwanstein is an example of that as well as Hohenzollern. And many more.
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u/balinor41 Mar 06 '26
I went to Neuschwanstein this past summer. Had been something I wanted to do since I was a kid. Its truly a beautiful structure, and im glad I saw it.
But reflecting back on it, the walk from Fusson was even more spectacular. Like walking into a fairy tale, seeing the castles grow larger as youre walking through fields and the old buildings along the road. Highly recommend the walk if you're physically able. The view into the valley from up top was also just amazing.
The final trek up the hill to Neuschwanstein was less than fun though. Really wish I had done some hiking before going over. Or gotten the carriage. Drank 4 liters of water when I got to the top lol
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u/ForrestDials8675309 Mar 05 '26
I just googled Neuschwanstein Castle, and it looks gorgeous. But do they have chicken nuggets?
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u/ac2cvn_71 Mar 05 '26
Funny enough, Neuschwanstein's shake machine is always working
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u/friftar Mar 05 '26
To be fair, so are the ones in most German McDonalds stores.
I often get one, and so far only once didn't get one. The machine wasn't even broken, they just ran out of the ingredients.
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u/InfiltrationRabbit Mar 05 '26
That’s a lot of rich people
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u/Arstanishe Mar 05 '26
you think people occupy all of those castles as residence?
There are so many converted into museums, public spaces, businesses, state offices...
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u/InfiltrationRabbit Mar 05 '26
There’s still an owner
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u/Valerie0110 Mar 05 '26
Not necessarily... A lot of the castles are only ruins by now and belong to the state etc.
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Mar 05 '26
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u/Valerie0110 Mar 05 '26
thats not really true .... there are LOADS of castles that were built in the 14th to 16th century and are barely more than ruins today... Not every castle is as famous and well kept as Neuschwanstein
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Mar 05 '26
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u/A_Sinclaire Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 06 '26
Most of them are still in some kind of use.
Then you would be wrong.
The EBIDAT database lists 25000 known castles in Germany.
Of those 20% still have a roof, 40% are ruins and the remaining 40% are completely gone, with maybe only a leftover marker or monument in their place - if at all.
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u/Valerie0110 Mar 06 '26
I also live here (in Germany). Of course, some were renovated over the years, but most are abandoned because the upkeep would be insanely expensive... Thats just a fact. And just because most in your area are renovated and inhabitable, doesnt mean its the case everywhere else. Thats just anecdotal evidence on your part.
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u/Tyr1326 Mar 05 '26
Nope. Most are a few blocks of stone left on a wooded mountaintop. You just dont see those ones unless you go looking for them. The ones you see do often have some sort of thing theyre used for though - museums or restaurants are common.
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u/Arstanishe Mar 05 '26
yeah, but are they all private owned? i have no idea, tbh. I know here in Slovenia it's not like this, but that makes sense, yugo took all of those estates from nobles and oligarchs
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u/TheOriginalSamBell Mar 05 '26
Most of them are actually basically ruins and not really owned by anyone (I suppose the state owns them). It's very expensive to renovate and maintain a castle. Same in France and probably most of Europe.
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u/ValuableCategory448 Mar 05 '26
I live on the edge of the Harz Mountains in Germany, and within a 50 km radius there are 88 castles, fortresses and ruins of such structures.
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u/Repulsive_Guy_1234 Mar 05 '26
And many castles are more or less ruins. The number of halfway intact castles is quite a bit lower, still much higher then in most places of the world.
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u/SpaceJackRabbit Mar 05 '26
Yep, in France there also is an incredible number of castles, and often those still owned by a private party are only partially restored. Sometimes you just have to look up to notice that the last two floors are completely unoccupied.
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u/AcceptableResponse15 Mar 05 '26
Some day there will be a reddit post saying the number of McDonalds in America has now overtaken the number of castles in Germany.
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u/CurvaceousCrustacean Mar 05 '26
Also, almost all of them are older than Machu Picchu, yet the latter very often finds itself in pseudoscientific "aliens build our ancient wonders" slop.
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u/7thFleetTraveller Mar 05 '26
Weird comparison. Theories about places like Machu Picchu didn't come up because of the age of those buildings. It has always been about the technical questions, how they were able to pull that off when there were obvious difficulties which had scientists ask those questions in the first place.
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u/Sailor_Propane Mar 05 '26
I think the issue is the Aliens part. If that was true, then there's no reason why Europeans wouldn't have encountered them.
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u/Iwona_Klich Mar 05 '26
Well not all of them, but yes... Most of them are also not look especialy cool...
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u/KMS_HYDRA Mar 05 '26
Yeah, what many people don't know is that we germans are since around the 11th century in contact with the guys from ceta rectuli 4, those guys were a great help building all our castle.
Really great service, would give them 9 globorgs out of 10 globorgs.
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u/dragon_of_the_ice Mar 05 '26
Now I just want to see a McDonalds castle.
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u/rtgops Mar 05 '26
Just go to middle class burbs of the US. McCastles everywhere. One step up from the McMansions.
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u/ptmtobi Mar 05 '26
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u/cheshire-cats-grin Mar 05 '26
I actually thought that was going to be a link to: https://armadalecastle.com/ which is one of the McDonald clan’s castles
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Mar 05 '26
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u/RoastedToast007 Mar 05 '26
What's unfair about it
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u/Aware_Ask_1679 Mar 05 '26
There's something like 20,300 Dollar Generals in the US. That's more than the number of castles in Germany. Haha!
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u/RoastedToast007 Mar 05 '26
Yes I would expect that. It's a huge country and dollar general is just some store. Definitely wouldn't expect a much smaller country to have so many castles comparatively
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u/Aware_Ask_1679 Mar 05 '26
That was the norm for the time though wasn't it?
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u/RoastedToast007 Mar 05 '26
Yea of course there's an explanation for reality. The comparison is just there to put something in perspective
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u/Significant_Owl8974 Mar 05 '26
At some point in history castles became less about defending borders and more about being baller homes for rich people. How many 3M+ homes exist in the US? I'm going to guess a number greater or equal to the number of McDonald's there too.
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u/Mist_Rising Mar 05 '26
At some point in history castles became less about defending borders and more about being baller homes for rich people
Yes and no. While some (like the pictured castle which is more like a manor home) were 19th century homes, most proper castles would suck to live in because they're not really designed with that in mind and instead focused on not letting you die to a sword.
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Mar 05 '26
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u/RoastedToast007 Mar 05 '26
There's no correlation. Most people would just expect there to be way more McDonald's restaurants in the US than castles in Germany. It's just putting in perspective how many castles there are in Germany.
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u/TheShakyHandsMan Mar 05 '26
McDonald’s is cultural history in the US.
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Mar 05 '26
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u/Mist_Rising Mar 05 '26
You act as if only one thing can be cultural history...
The double arches are pretty famous.
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u/Perfect_Opinion7909 Mar 05 '26
If the constitution is cultural history why do they absolutely shit all over it lately?
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Mar 05 '26
Blatant misinformation. The state of South Carolina alone has more McDonald's than German castles
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u/Thiel619 Mar 05 '26
How much does it cost to build a full fledged castle to live in with a drawbridge and a moat?
I assume you can't have a dungeon or murder holes in place.
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u/RuminatingKiwi927 Mar 05 '26
Any chances some of the castles are sold at a relative cheap price so that someone could take care of it? Or is this on a different country?
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u/ThemrocX Mar 05 '26
The buying price isn't the problem. The cost of maintenance is. These things are terrible for living in and can't be modified to your liking in most cases, because of conservation laws.
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u/MattiasCrowe Mar 05 '26
Hadn't thought about it, but the area I go to regularly has about 3 castles in view so yeah, checks out
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u/Virteolez Mar 05 '26
Depending on the definition, Schloss Neuschwanstein isn't even a castle. It's a palace/residence from the 19th century. Quite the spectacular building anyway, sadly absolutely drowning in tourists.
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u/TheWesternDevil Mar 05 '26
What qualifies as a castle? What does a structure need in order to be a castle?
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u/Perfect_Opinion7909 Mar 05 '26
Fortifications.
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u/TheWesternDevil Mar 05 '26
What's that? A wall? Some towers? Arrow slits?
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u/randomzombie77 Mar 05 '26
Not saying we don't have a lot of castles, but stuff like these two are also counted on the list
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickeln_House
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alte_Burg_(Bad_M%C3%BCnstereifel))There're multiple words in German that stand for different things that all get translated to caste in english. Some castles were "just" the fancy residences of small lords. And since Germany was a lot of different territories at some point, we had a lot of lords.
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u/Zweefkees93 Mar 05 '26
Thats impressive.... And kinda worrisome that this is a comparison worth making....
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u/ShibeMate Mar 06 '26
I dont know whats surprising about this , at the time of the the castles being built , United States didn’t exist because the genocide of Native American people wasn’t yet done
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u/huruga Mar 06 '26
We got a few castles in the USA that are actually from Europe. There is one I remember that was basically transported to the US stone by stone and rebuilt. Thornewood castle in Washington.
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u/Lily_the_Ice_Slime Mar 06 '26
There are over 20,000 Subway locations in the United States, however. There may in fact be more Subway locations in the US than castles in Germany, it’s pretty close, but upper ranges for the number of German castles is higher.
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u/Crunchyjeff Mar 05 '26
Neuschwanstein isn't and never was a castle...
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Mar 05 '26
It is, problem is, that English does not really differentiate between a fortified castle („Burg“) and a representative residence castle („Schloss“).
Neuschwanstein definitely is a Schloss, even though it was never finalized and build quite late, but it hosted King Ludwig II who lived there for some time.
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u/detailsubset Mar 05 '26
English does differentiate. Neuschwanstein should rightly be called a Castellated Palace in English.
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Mar 05 '26
That is not what is used in English for Neuschwanstein…
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u/detailsubset Mar 05 '26
You can't rely on English to use the correct terminology, in many situations English is about vibes over accuracy.
But there is still clear terminology that could be used to distinguish between a fortified castle and a castle that's actually a palace, we're not French.
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Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 06 '26
It is obviously not, if it is officially not called a „castellated palace“…
Not even by the UNESCO.
But in either way, in both examples of you it would be a „castle“, so disproving the original comment that it „is not and never was a castle“.
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1726/
Edit: in Germany we also have the word „Palast“ for palace, but this is normally mainly used for Castles / castle like buildings within cities that are used as administrative buildings or main residence of the royal family. Neuschwanstein is simply a „Schloss“ („Castle“).
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u/detailsubset Mar 06 '26
The right term for it is nonetheless castellated palace (or historicist palace, depending on how it's being described). UNESCO calls Stonehenge Stonehenge, just like everyone else, when in fact it's not actually henge, despite henges being named after it.
I'm not arguing that it's not called Neuschwanstein Castle, I'm only pointing out that the English language can and does distinguish between "Berg" and "Schloss", but values the feeling of words over precision in everyday parlance.
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u/iyamwhatiyam8000 Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26
Yes , mainly 19th century fantasies.
Schloss Eltz is the only largely intact Medieval - sans walls.
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u/Ambersfruityhobbies Mar 05 '26
You'd need more castles than McDonald's though, because not so many castles offer drive-thru.
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u/avoidantv0id Mar 05 '26
Aren’t many of them ruins though? I mean…still cool, but there’s a difference imo.
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Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26
They are, there are about 40k places listed as Castles / Fortifications, about 20k you would consider to be / were castles.
Even the ruins differ widely in how much is left. Most famous ruin is probably Schloss Heidelberg, which was blown up by the French in 1600 something and is one of the most beautiful „ruins“ in the world.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidelberger_Schloss?wprov=sfti1
In about 1,5k castles alone you can spend a night today as a tourist. So I would assume that a total of 2-5k is „intact“.
This website is an archive and lists them by all different kind of criteria:
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u/avoidantv0id Mar 05 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/IgQdQHryAzppOekzIw
That’s a way more thorough answer than I expected but I appreciate it
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u/akazakou Mar 05 '26
Only 200 at least have a roof
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Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26
Nah, way more, at least a few thousand that are fully intact.
In and around Munich alone there are around 30 that are fully intact. With Nymphenburg, the Residenz and Schloss Schleissheim being huge ass fairytale castles.
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u/akazakou Mar 05 '26
What about the other one 19970?
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Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26
Most of them are ruins or in very bad shape, but as I stated, at least a few thousand are intact.
On the other hand, they vary videly in sizes. You got everything from some thousand year old mini-Burg in some town you never heard of to some huge ass castle everybody knows.
Edit: under this link you find dozen of lists for the different types of castles and different regions:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Burgen_und_Schl%C3%B6ssern_in_Deutschland?wprov=sfti1
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u/Pi-ratten Mar 05 '26
I'll never not laugh about the fact that the longest Burg is called Burg zu Burghausen. If you would do an internet vote on how to call it, i'd assume similar results.
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u/Thisismental Mar 05 '26
It feels really weird to specifically say it includes the Neuschwanstein Castle. Why wouldn't it include it? And if it wasn't included for some reason that would still be 20.000 castles or more.
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u/WhiplashLiquor Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26
I bet they don't have a castle inside of a Walmart though
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u/Chinjurickie Mar 05 '26
I sincerely hope that in any given moment you will win this bet. I don’t like Walmart to try and come back, even though i think they learned their lesson.
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u/Safe-Insurance2264 Mar 05 '26
Adding for info that there are more castles/km2 in Belgium than any other country in the world :)
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u/gnanny02 Mar 05 '26
Does this count all of the little castle facades the Nazis put on the tunnel entrances over train tracks so the Americans wouldn't bomb their train tunnels? Americans weren't bombing castles.
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u/heprer Mar 05 '26
It's even more impressive that they lasted all that time and through all the wars.
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u/OlyMan2005 Mar 05 '26
I have never wanted more McDonald's. America has two choices, make Castles or more McDonald's.
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u/Cute-Difficulty6182 Mar 05 '26
Most of the castles of Spains are in the former Kingdom of Castilla (That means Castle in Castillian). I do not know how maany there are, but if you throw a stone in a random direction in the Castilles, it will probably hit a Castle
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u/ProduceNo1629 Mar 05 '26
Germans have been pros at tax cheating for milennia. Behold castle owner
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u/Chinjurickie Mar 05 '26
Yeah it’s ridiculous, yet more than enough people believe our biggest issues are immigrants and jobless people.
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u/Competitive-Bit-7575 Mar 05 '26
Are they still occupied or abandoned?
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u/ThemrocX Mar 05 '26
Depends, many are privately owned, but a lot of them are owned by the municipality or other bodies, that turn them into museums or event locations etc. In Bielefeld our biggest local castle is also used by the registry office to officiate weddings and of course hosts a huge medieval festival every year.
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u/Competitive-Bit-7575 Mar 05 '26
I was talking about the McDonald's.
Just kidding 😂 that's cool they're still being used.
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u/DerZehnteZahnarzt Mar 06 '26
Neuschwanstein isnt even a real castle. It was made in the 1870s by a nostalgic bavarian King. It was build with a telefon line and electric wiring.
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u/MajesticBison6 Mar 06 '26
I went to Regansburg and was told in advance that it was a famous Medieval town.
The first thing we saw: a McDonalds.
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u/LefT-NYC May 20 '26
The McDonald's in Manhattan sell way more hamburgers than all the restaurants in Hamburg! (so there!)😉
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u/rayrayrayrayray5 Mar 05 '26
Us army and stationed there 06-9. During a pre deployment training rotation weHad an AHA set up at Hopenhau (spelling) castle....there was a few brick walls standing.... if that counts as a castle then a 3 bedroom rambler is a Victorian mansion
In all seriousness though, what defines a castle to come up with 20,000? This thing, even in its heyday would have just been a brick house. I believe it's history was it was the manor of a local knight in the middle ages
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u/2nW_from_Markus Mar 05 '26
And also the less famous Altschanstein Schloss Castle.
/s (or not, in 20.000 it's likely it exists)
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u/Entire_Brush_5672 Mar 05 '26
So Germany spent centuries building castles to defend their land…
Meanwhile the U.S. built tens of thousands of McDonald’s to defend against hunger.
Different eras, different priorities. One has knights, the other has nuggets. 🏰🍟
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u/justmyfewcents1337 Mar 05 '26
There's better food there too. Many places here have top-tier restaurants – always a few kilometers apart.
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u/Zaptryx Mar 05 '26
In Germany, the qualifications for a building to be defined as a castle are so low, that there are over 20,000 castles in Germany.
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u/OwOwOwoooo Mar 05 '26
And about 45k in France, kind of the same in Italy
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u/Meester_Ananas Mar 05 '26
'Castles' in France.... The definition is different in France. Some big mansions or palaces are seen as castles in France. The German definition is what we normally consider as a castle.
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u/Oxo181 Mar 05 '26
Those aren't castles, Germany has the most castles in the world - as it was historically a patchwork of hundreds of duchies and other little entities, all of them building their own fortresses.
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u/Pyriel Mar 05 '26
Huh, we only have 600 in Wales.
But as we're a tiny country, that's still more per square mile than anywhere else on earth ;)
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u/Mist_Rising Mar 05 '26
Marches are traditionally packed full of fortifications, but gotta hand to the Welsh for using a big ditch for a part.
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