r/interestingasfuck • u/The_Love-Tap • 22h ago

Germany has more castles than the United States has McDonald’s. This is the Eltz castle, located in Wiershem. It has been owned and occupied by the same family for 33 generations over 800 years

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u/EphemeralDan 20h ago

When I went to Ireland. I saw the ruins of a castle and asked a local what castle it was, he said, "I don't know." It's just an old pile of rocks" That's when I understood that castles in Ireland were like barns in New England. You see some truly spectacular specimens, and then you have a bunch that barely qualify as buildings. And then you have the ones that are just piles of rubble. Fewer of those because it's a lot easier to get rid of a pile of wood than a pile of rocks.

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u/mang87 19h ago

I'm from Ireland, and I never really considered this before. I read that comment and thought 5k castles was a shit ton, and so I went and looked up how many we have. Apparently it's over 7000, and is around 30k if you include partial ruins and fortified estate buildings. I've never really paid much attention to them because they're just part of the landscape, or an old building at the center of a town. I guess we don't really have many truly impressive ones like there are in other parts of the world, so it was never worth paying attention to. Honestly, we also weren't particularly fond of the people who would have lived in those castles.

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u/Fox--Hollow 18h ago

And 40-50k more if you count ringforts. Which doesn't surprise me, there's a couple within a five minute stroll from my house.

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u/AnaphoricReference 15h ago

Not in the Netherlands. Since stone doesn't naturally occur here it is carried off immediately.

Mesolithic dolmens. Roman ruins. Castles. They were usually just business until late 18th century. At best they left a drawing.

Ramparts and artificial mounds weren't safe either. Dirt was always big business. We still import a lot of sand and basalt stone for construction.

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u/Cocosito 5h ago

As a native of the American West I have never considered that there are places without stone.

What does that even mean? Like it's just soil all the way down? It's just not accessible or there are other conditions that prevent quarrying?

So many questions . . .

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u/TeamZweitstudium 2h ago

Read up on how they built Venice. I hope it's a nice rabbit hole for you

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u/Ok-Youth-160 10h ago

My hometown is at a location that has been important for trade for literally thousands of years. My buddy in university was living in a house older then the US with his room mates.

Next to our apartment they found Roman ruins in a field. They dug it up had a look and now it's a field again.

It's basically impossible to build because it's just layers and layers of history and you call in the archeologists to examine the finds.

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u/FaintingGoat123 6h ago

I was told one reason they’re not more often preserved in Ireland is they are symbols of British oppression. But that might be BS, not sure 🤷🏻‍♂️