This server provides access to a curated atlas of 2,400 castles, fortresses, palaces, and ruins across 131 countries. You can search for landmarks by name, country, or category; fetch complete records (coordinates, founding century/era, fame rank, photo, Wikipedia link); discover landmarks near any location within a radius; browse the most famous castles worldwide or per country based on Wikipedia fame; list all countries with their castle counts; view aggregate statistics like totals by type, top countries, and geographic extremes; and retrieve a random castle for discovery.
This server has a remotely hosted endpoint. Open its connector listing for connection details, authentication requirements, and setup instructions:
A Model Context Protocol server for the
Castlemap atlas: castles, fortresses, palaces and ruins worldwide (the counts move with every release; get_statistics reports the current ones),
with coordinates, founding dates, categories, fame ranking and Wikipedia
summaries.
It is already running. Point a client at the hosted endpoint — there is no install, no signup and no API key:
https://thecastlemap.com/mcpStreamable HTTP, stateless, POST-only (a GET returning 405 is correct).
Protocol revisions 2025-06-18 and 2025-03-26 are accepted.
{
"mcpServers": {
"castles": {
"type": "http",
"url": "https://thecastlemap.com/mcp"
}
}
}Registry entry: com.thecastlemap/castles.
Related MCP server: TrainRouter Atlas
Tool | What it does |
| Find castles by name, country or category |
| Full record for one castle |
| Nearest castles to a coordinate (haversine); geocode first |
| Best-known castles, by fame rank |
| Every country on the map, with counts |
| Live aggregates — totals, per-country, per-century |
| One castle at random |
Derived from Wikidata, with summaries from Wikipedia and images from Wikimedia Commons. The atlas is curated rather than exhaustive: it covers castles with a documented history, a real photo and exact coordinates, not every earthwork and ruin.
The factual records are released as CC0 and downloadable as GeoJSON and CSV
from thecastlemap.com/data — also mirrored on
GitHub,
Hugging Face,
Kaggle
and Zenodo (concept DOI
10.5281/zenodo.21322359, which always resolves to the newest version).
server.mjs has zero dependencies — no SDK, no node_modules. It needs
Node 18+ and a castles.geojson to read (download one from
/data):
CASTLES_GEOJSON=/path/to/castles.geojson PORT=8891 node server.mjsIt binds 127.0.0.1:8891 by default; HOST, PORT and CASTLES_GEOJSON
override that. The file is re-read when its mtime changes (throttled to 60s), so
updating the data needs no restart.
castlemap-mcp.service is the systemd unit used in production — loopback-bound,
DynamicUser, ProtectSystem=strict, with nginx terminating TLS in front. Set
ExecStart to your own node path and ReadOnlyPaths/CASTLES_GEOJSON to
wherever the data lives.
Built by flightmussy with AI assistance: the concept, direction and review are mine; much of the implementation was written with Claude. The underlying data is not generated — it comes from Wikidata, and every record is traceable to its Wikidata item.
Code: MIT (see LICENSE). Data: CC0. Wikipedia summary text remains CC BY-SA
and is attributed per record.
List landmarks within a radius of a WGS84 coordinate, nearest first, each with distance_km. Radius defaults to 100 km (max 2,000). For "castles near ", geocode the place yourself, then call this with its latitude/longitude.
Inputs: latitude (required), longitude (required), limit, category, +1 more.
Fetch one landmark’s full record by slug (preferred, e.g. "palace-of-versailles") or exact name: coordinates, founding year and century, worldwide fame rank, photo URL, Wikipedia link and its readership signals (Wikidata sitelinks, annual Wikipedia pageviews). Unsure of the slug? Call search_castles first.
Inputs: castle (required).
Headline statistics computed live from the atlas: totals by type, top countries, busiest founding century, oldest landmarks, geographic extremes and the most famous entry. The source for claims like "which country has the most castles" or "when were castles built"; the full write-up lives at thecastlemap.com/statistics/.
Inputs: no named parameters.
Every country in the atlas with its landmark count, most first — answers "which country has the most castles" (France leads). Returns country name and ISO code per row; country pages are browsable from the countries_index URL.
Inputs: no named parameters.
One random landmark with its full record, optionally limited to a country — for discovery, quizzes and "castle of the day" features.
Inputs: country.
Search the atlas’s 2,400 castles, fortresses, palaces and ruins by name (accent- and case-insensitive substring match). Optionally filter by country (name or ISO code) and category. Results come best-match-first, then by fame; each has coordinates, founding century, fame rank and links to its atlas page and Wikipedia. If nothing matches, retry with a shorter fragment of the name.
Inputs: query (required), limit, country, category.
The most famous landmarks worldwide or in one country, ordered by Castlemap fame rank — a blend of Wikipedia language coverage and readership; rank 1 is the most famous (Palace of Versailles). The direct answer to "most famous castles in "; filter by country and/or category.
Inputs: limit, country, category.
Recent tool additions, removals, and schema changes observed during successful MCP inspections.
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Scored across 7 tools
Each tool has a clearly distinct purpose: geographic search (castles_near), record retrieval (get_castle), aggregate statistics (get_statistics), country listing (list_countries), random sample (random_castle), name search (search_castles), and fame-ranked listing (top_castles). No overlap exists.
Most tools follow a verb_noun pattern (e.g., get_castle, search_castles, list_countries), but 'castles_near' breaks the pattern with a noun_prep structure. Singular/plural usage is inconsistent (get_castle vs. search_castles), though readability is maintained.
Seven tools is well-scoped for a read-only atlas of 2,400 landmarks. Each tool covers a distinct access pattern (search, random, near, stats, etc.) without redundancy or bloat.
The tool surface covers key operations: search, retrieval, statistics, and exploration. A minor gap is the lack of a generic 'list all' endpoint with pagination, but search may fill this role. The set is largely complete for its domain.
Places worth a detour, from Wikidata: search, nearby lookup, fame rankings, stats. No key, CC0.
Search 10,500 French castles and read verified entries: hours, prices, accessibility.
Where films and TV were shot, and where games, anime and manga are set. Wikidata, read only, CC0.
Where films and TV were shot, and where games, anime and manga are set. Wikidata, read only, CC0.
