Synopsis This stunning collection of aerial photographs of some 120 castles means that we will never see history or architecture through the same eyes again With spectacular examples from all over Europe, the bird's-eye views give a totally new perspective on the skills and ingenuity of the medieval engineers and builders of these massive strongholds. Evocative ruins more than one thousand years old give way to the fortified manor houses of the early medieval years. Increasing wealth and stability lead to more imposing edifices, and in the high middle ages of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the classic castle takes shape. On a far grander scale, with elegance and harmony added to defensive requirements, these form a magnificent backdrop to the age of chivalry in the fourteenth century, and a reference point for the increasingly fantastical castles of the renaissance and beyond. Grim and beautiful in turn, magnificent and resplendent or touchingly modest and partly ruined, these buildings are one of the most romantic and powerful of our cultural legacies, and this book shows them as never before.
