I built this map from open data. Every point is one of 5,793 castles, fortresses, palaces and ruins across 138 countries: 2,591 castles, 1,180 fortresses, 934 palaces and 1,088 ruins. The density is the story. Europe blazes while most of the planet stays dark.
It is a curated atlas, not a complete inventory. Germany alone has an estimated 25,000 castle sites (According to some sources). A landmark makes the map when it has a real photo on Wikimedia Commons, a Wikipedia article and exact coordinates in Wikidata, balanced across countries so the map stays explorable. France leads with 351.
You can explore every one interactively at https://thecastlemap.com/ with photos, founding centuries and short stories, plus a daily Guess the Castle game. There are no ads or sign up, everything CC0 and free to download.
This is very cool. As a side note, I also appreciated that it was one of the only sites I've visited lately that said it wasn't interested in cookies, instead of giving me a legal document about how they're going to track me, whether or not I like it
I just let the Ai design privacy terms so that it actually follows them