Germany’s Neuschwanstein Castle actually appears to be like the half. So does the Tower of London. But an ammunition bunker in South Dakota — particularly one marketed as a place to go “glamping” — isn’t what one usually thinks of as a citadel.
In his new guide, “Castles: A Fortified History of the World” (Viking, Nov. 3), historian Dan Jones makes room for all of them.
The Neuschwanstein citadel stands close to Schwangau, Bavaria. DDP/AFP via Getty Images
He begins with the acquainted thought of a fortified residence, then considers buildings whose defenses grew to become less essential than their grandeur. Rather than insist on one architectural guidelines, Jones concludes that “a castle can be many things” — from Bronze Age walled cities in the jap Mediterranean and the houses of British monarchs to trendy underground shelters and Mark Zuckerberg’s Hawaiian compound.
“Safety, status, and luxury are things that can best be enjoyed from behind strong defenses in secure locations,” Jones writes. “Protecting one’s person, family, and property is the starting point of projecting power.”
How much protection a citadel truly wants rely on who builds it. For some rich Americans, the European look was enough.
“Protecting one’s person, family, and property is the starting point of projecting power,” Dan Jones writes in “Castles.”
George Washington Vanderbilt II’s 250-room Biltmore property in North Carolina took inspiration from France’s Chateau de Blois. When Vanderbilt welcomed friends at Christmas in 1895, they discovered a banqueting corridor with a carved Gothic throne and a library containing 20,000 books. There was also a swimming pool and bowling alley.
“Besides a collection of historic armor that included Japanese samurai pieces dating to the age of the Tokugawa shoguns, there was nothing remotely defensive about the Biltmore,” Jones writes.
Still, it gave other wealthy Americans something to aspire to. As Jones places it, “The leading men of the new industries founded dynasties and built dynastic seats to match.”
The Biltmore House is proven circa 1902. Getty Images
In the early 1900s, hotelier George Boldt constructed a six-story residence on Heart Island in the St. Lawrence River, full with conical towers and medieval-themed buildings. In 1914, in Connecticut, actor William Gillette, well-known for enjoying Sherlock Holmes, constructed a citadel geared up with secret passageways and a mirror-based spying system.
Gillette was explicit about its future possession. In his will, he warned against leaving it to “some blithering saphead who had no conception of where he is or with what surrounded.”
William Randolph Hearst went further in bringing Europe residence. At his California citadel, constructed for many years all through the first half of the twentieth century, the newspaper magnate’s bed room integrated a painted 14th-century ceiling and doorways imported from Spain.
A tower rises from the ornate entrance of Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California. Getty Images
Photographer Cecil Beaton recalled arriving at the property. “We caught sight of a vast, sparkling white castle in Spain,” he wrote, as Jones recounts in his guide. “It was out of a fairy story.”
At Disneyland, Sleeping Beauty Castle turned the European fantasy into a business attraction. “Castles had always been buildings where function and imagination commingled; here, imagination was everything, and what function lay beneath was concerned with profit and not war,” Jones writes.
For in the present day’s consumers of large houses, maintaining individuals out stays a promoting level.
Take Mark Zuckerberg’s Koolau Ranch on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, which lined 1,400 acres in the 2023 reporting Jones cites. Plans called for dozens of bedrooms, kitchens and entertaining rooms, alongside with a few precautions against unwelcome guests.
Gold leaf and Murano glass tile the Roman pool at Hearst Castle in San Simeon, Calif. The citadel was constructed by William Randolph Hearst and Julia Morgan. Getty Images
“Planning documents also suggested it will have an underground shelter, blast-resistant door, private energy and water supplies, and food-production capacity,” Jones writes. By July 2025, the property had grown to more than 2,300 acres, with plans for further buildings.
Meanwhile, Peter Thiel has been making an attempt to construct a large luxurious lodge in New Zealand overlooking Lake Wānaka and designed with a grass roof to assist it mix into the hillside. The roughly 1,080-foot-long complicated would accommodate up to 30 friends, with a separate proprietor’s residence and a meditation constructing. But planning authorities rejected it in 2022, discovering that its dimension would dominate the protected panorama and that it’d be too seen from a close by public strolling observe. The Environment Court rejected his firm’s enchantment in May 2024, concluding that proposed tree planting wouldn’t adequately display screen the buildings.
But tremendous safe, secluded settings aren’t just for the filthy wealthy. “Twenty-first-century fortified compounds are also currently being developed and marketed to the merely moderately wealthy,” Jones writes.
Vivos xPoint stands close to the Black Hills space of South Dakota. VIVOS XPOINT
At Vivos xPoint, a former Army munitions depot in South Dakota, consumers can select from 575 bunkers buried beneath thick layers of soil, with 400 toes between neighbors. Prices start at around $55,000 before outfitting, which the firm says can flip your shelter into “a very chic glamping bunker on a barebones budget.”
Modern shelter homeowners face their own uncertainty about what might await them outside. Jones describes compounds with impartial water and energy provides, medical dispensaries and a yr’s stockpile of gas and rest room paper. There are even detention facilities. Apparently, surviving the apocalypse doesn’t imply everyone will get alongside.
“What sort of world would be left for the inhabitants of such a fortress to rule over, should such a war break out?” Jones asks.
The Vivos gross sales pitch makes the preparations sound manageable. Think of a lengthy tenting journey, it suggests, with concrete and metal to defend you.
The tough half is understanding when the journey ends.
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