Châteaux of France
Castles and château sites across France, by century of construction.
Castle and château sites across France, from the motte-and-bailey fortifications of the central Middle Ages to the residential châteaux of the early-modern monarchy. Each site is placed by coordinate and, where an inception is recorded, attributed to its century of construction. The distribution traces the dense fortified landscape of the French regions. Data are drawn live-then-frozen from Wikidata.
| Theme | Military — conflict & fortification |
|---|---|
| Region | Europe |
| Temporal range | 10th–18th c. CE |
| Geographic coverage | Continental |
| Records | 496 geolocated entities |
| Data source | Wikidata Query Service (P31 · P17 · P625) |
| Centroid | 47.10° N · 2.57° E |
| Last revised | Jun 2026 |
Compiled at build time from the Wikidata Query Service: entities that are (a subclass of) a castle located in France (P17 = France) and carrying a coordinate (P625), capped at 500 results. Where an inception (P571) is recorded, the century band is DERIVED from it; undated sites are grouped as such. The query and access timestamp below constitute the reproducibility statement.
Century band derived from inception year (P571); undated sites grouped separately.
SPARQL query
SELECT ?item ?itemLabel ?coord ?inception WHERE { ?item wdt:P31/wdt:P279* wd:Q23413 . ?item wdt:P17 wd:Q142 . ?item wdt:P625 ?coord . OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P571 ?inception . } SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en,fr". } } LIMIT 500 The published dataset is distributed as CSV with a derived GeoJSON edition; coordinates are decimal degrees on the WGS 84 datum. DOI 10.5281/ortelius.042.