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Castle & Fortification Locations — Global & by Country

Download castle and historic fortification locations from OpenStreetMap as GeoJSON — perfect for historical GIS and heritage mapping.

Format GeoJSON
Coverage Global (44 countries)
Resolution OSM historic=castle nodes
License ODbL (OpenStreetMap)
Update Updated with OSM releases

About this dataset

Global castle and fortification locations from OpenStreetMap, filterable by country.

Download historic castle and fortification locations worldwide from OpenStreetMap data. Extracted per country from Geofabrik OSM extracts, provided as GeoJSON point files with name and type attributes.

Heritage mapping Historical GIS Tourism planning Cultural geography

FAQ

What OSM tags are used?

Castle locations use the historic=castle tag from OpenStreetMap. Fortifications (historic=fort) and ruins (historic=ruins) are also included where tagged.

Are these all real castles?

Data quality reflects OpenStreetMap contributions. Major well-known castles are well-covered; remote ruins may be incomplete in less-mapped regions.

How many castles are in the dataset?

The global dataset includes tens of thousands of castle and fortification locations, with the highest density in Europe (France, Germany, UK, Italy).