What is a collective term for castles, citadels, forts, palaces etc.?

Question

We at Travel-SE are having an ongoing tag reorganization, and we're trying to find a collective term that encompasses the following:

• castles
• châteaux (which are really castles, but not every castle is a château)
• palaces
• forts
• citadels
• country houses (which are really palaces, but for non-royals)

We'd appreciate if you guys can come up with an appropriate category that covers these all. We don't want to create separate tags because frankly people won't know the difference between these and won't care.

We were thinking of fortified-structures or palatial-structures, but these don't work quite well. residences is just too broad, and royal-residences is not correct since country houses were not used by royal figures.

Any other ideas?

Answer 1

After looking at wikipedia entries for castles and fortifications, I can see that there are many technical historical-architectural terms which are very precise and detailed.

1^st option The encompassing term might be fortifications. This is technically probably a bit wide as it would include military constructs which people do not inhabit and might (technically) miss some of the buildings you are trying to describe. (You might go with fortified historical residences or some such term)

2^nd option On the other hand, depending on technical correctness you are aiming for, pragmatically and simply castles might be a good tag (you can explain in the tags summary that it also includes citadels, stately homes, etc.. )

Both the term castle and fortification are taken from this paragraph in wikipedia:

Castle is sometimes used as a catch-all term for all kinds of fortifications, and as a result has been misapplied in the technical sense. An example of this is Maiden Castle which, despite the name, is an Iron Age hill fort, which had a very different origin and purpose. Although "castle" has not become, like chateau in French and schloss in German, a generic term for an English country house, many of these use the word in their name while having few if any of the architectural characteristics...

3^rd option

Combining common characteristics of the terms that you want to describe

• Historical private residences (is it really necessary to say private, I wonder)
• Historical or fortified residences

Finally, I am not a historian nor an architect, so maybe asking in a more specialized environment might yield technically more appropriate result (wikipedia discussion page?).

Answer 2

Does "Stately homes and castles" cover it? Or even just "Stately homes"?

Answer 3

These tend to be referred to as historic buildings or sometimes the broader term ancient monuments. Of course those terms aren't precisely what you're looking for, since both terms can include buildings not on your list - an ancient barn, full of history, could be counted as an historic building or ancient monument - and equally if a palace was built right now it wouldn't be counted as either term (although it would, as Barrie points out, most likely be of architectural interest).

In Britain, the terms historic building and ancient monument have legal implications:

Historical buildings are:

ancient buildings, traditional settlements, old towns and streets and other historical and cultural remains that contain historical and cultural values, but have yet to be designated as ancient monuments.

Ancient monuments are:

either Scheduled Ancient Monuments or "any other monument which in the opinion of the Secretary of State is of public interest by reason of the historic, architectural, traditional, artistic or archaeological interest attaching to it"

Perhaps something like historical residences fits the bill?

Answer 4

How about castles-etc.? It strikes me as unambiguous and simple.

Answer 5

Other than "buildings", I don't see what these have in common. Castles, forts, and citadels would all be fortifications, but "palaces" and "country houses" certainly would not. Most of your list are big, impressive structures, but again, "country houses" and "chateaux" are not.

The only connection I see is that they are all buildings that you consider interesting. Maybe something like "picturesque buildings"? Possibly "historic buildings" if that's what you're driving at.

Answer 6

They are all - are they not? - buildings of historical and architectural interest?

Answer 7

I am wondering if perhaps dogged determination to include all of those structures in one tag is a bit of a stretch. In particular, as some have commented, castle implies fortification while palace tends to imply size or opulence without much emphasis on fortification.

Further, even when cities or large structures in Asia are fortified, they tend to be referred to as palaces anyway, rather than castles. Personally, I would find it weird to tag the Forbidden City under castles.

Therefore, my recommendation would be to have two separate tags, castles and palaces, even though they overlap and will often be used together.

Answer 8

The collective term that encompasses ALL of these may actually be the word hold. Military fortifications are strongholds and residential palaces are households (a term that has been watered down as living standards increased for the average family). The word household means the hold (base/estate/whatever) of a house (as in family*).

At least that's what a few minutes of googling produced.

* "the Johnson family" could be written as "the house of Johnson", just to help anyone who don't know the "old" way of saying things. house (n) Meaning "family, including ancestors and descendants, especially if noble" is from c.1000. source

Answer 9

Stately Structures

Some of the other answers are good, but I believe this is the catchiest which makes it good for a tag. Just look at it...

stately-structures

Damn, that's nice.

Answer 10

That depends. Technically, all these categories of building can be fortified (Yes, palaces and mansions can be fortified)

Castles, palaces, mansions and chateaux are dwellings, their primary purpose was as homes for royalty, nobility and in later centuries, business magnates \ tycoons.

Forts on the other hand, have no real domestic component. They're strictly military bases.

"Castle" has been broadened to refer to any luxury residence or fortification, though it's most properly used to denote the heavily fortified residences of medieval Europe or feudal Japan. The term is also applicable to dwellings with some of the architectural characteristics often associated with medieval castles, like battlements and towers.

The term "chateau" can refer to any French or French style upper class home, whether it's a castle, palace, or mansion.

A country house in British English is a mansion located on a large piece of land in a rural area. The terms "manor house", "stately home" and fortificacthe" are synonyms.

"Palace" officially refers to an official residence of a country's ruler, or the leaders of the country's administrative divisions (AKA, states, provinces and their equivalents in other countries). But almost any grand house can be called a "palace",and architecturally speaking, there are private residences that are basically palaces.

A fort is a purely military fortification, containing no residential facilities except large open dorm rooms for the soldiers, as well as the auxiliary spaces, like mess hall and kitchen.

A citadel is a fortification located in or directly adjacent to a city, typically to domineer over the city and\or to serve as a final refuge for the denizens in case the city walls were breached. The citadel could also be the home of whoever was administering the city, in which case, the citadel was also a castle.