VisitScotland is encouraging visitors to get castle-bagging. To discover more about Scotland’s Castles, visit: https://www.visitscotland.com/blog/attractions/top-scottish-castles/
The research – which comes as the 2017 Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology comes to a close – also reveals that the Queen’s Holiday Home, Balmoral Castle, is Scotland’s second best-known castle (53%) after the iconic Edinburgh Castle, which 80% of British people were aware of.
Dunrobin Castle in Sutherland was voted the most romantic-looking castle** with over a quarter (29%) of the votes, followed by Crathes Castle in Aberdeenshire (16%) and popular visitor favourite Eilean Donan Castle in the Highlands (12%).
On the opposite side of the scale, Slains Castle in Peterhead was voted as the most likely to be haunted with almost a quarter of votes (22%), followed closely by the iconic Dunnottar Castle near Stonehaven (19%) and in third place, Brodick Castle (12%) on Arran.
The best castle in Scotland accolade went to Edinburgh Castle with over a third of the votes (39%) ahead of Stirling (5%), Urquhart (2%) and St Andrews Castles (2%).
Seven out of ten people (72%) stated they would like to stay overnight in a castle while on holiday in Scotland which is good news for around 145 castles that have been converted into hotels throughout the country.
In total, Scotland is thought to have around 3000 standing castles, ruins and documented sites. Of these, about 1050 are merely sites, including those where a house has been built on the site of a previous castle and about 825 are standing ruins. At the last count, around 660 were in use (private house, hotel or wedding venue) and around 469 were open to the public, though some only for a couple of weeks each year.***
Aberdour Castle in Fife and Castle Sween in Argyll are thought to be two of the oldest datable standing castles in Scotland, dating from around 1200 and the youngest castle in Scotland is thought to be Carbisdale Castle which was built in 1907.
