FOR CASTLE COLLECTORS
Castle Collector Insights
2026
The first ever report on the cost of castle properties in Europe
In partnership with Astutely
Castle Collector created the Castle Price Index to answer the fundamental question every buyer has, “what does a castle cost, to buy, to sell, and to own?”
We analysed data from 1,247 verified listings across 36 platforms and 10 European markets to breakdown the true cost of castle ownership. Our aim is to provide buyers and investors with reliable information that they can use to make better more informed decisions. This report is the first of its kind, and we plan to add more market data as our research continues.
Below we discuss the key findings from the Castle Price Index plus some interesting datapoints that surfaced during our research. Each section has a link to a companion article with deeper analysis. Plus you can also download the full report to access the entire unfiltered dataset.
€1.7 million
This is the asking price for a typical European castle. This figure is the median asking price across 1,247 verified listings. Half of castles for sale cost more, and half cost less. We chose the median price specifically because there were a handful of trophy estates that dragged the average up to a price that overstated what the actual market was showing.
Of the 1,246 listings we analysed, over a third (35%) sit in the €1–2 million range. Stretch to a €3 million budget, and more than 75% of castles on the market come within reach. Even at €1 million, 1 in every 4 listings is within budget.
Poland is the cheapest place to buy a castle by the square metre, at around €778/m², against a European average of €2,257/m². Ireland is the most expensive of the well-sampled markets at €3,333/m². Austria looks higher still, but its sample is too small to rely on, and Switzerland sits in a tier of its own, driven by alpine land and foreign-buyer rules.
A budget of a million euros will buy wildly different amounts of castle depending on the country. In Poland your money will travel the furthest, landing you around 1,285 square metres, a genuine palace. In Switzerland the same budget buys about 63m², closer to a city apartment than a castle. Between those two extremes is where we find most buyers actually shopping. Roughly 589 square metres in Italy, 436 in France, and 300 in Ireland.
Square metres of castle per €1 million
Castles tend to sell for 22% less than they’re listed at. On a typical €1.7M listing, that’s a €380,000 discount. As a comparison, residential homes usually sell within a few percent of the asking.
This finding is based on France’s national land registry, which recorded 1,103 verified sales from 2023–2025. No other large market is this transparent with its sale prices. So the 22% discount is a French figure, though the same gap almost certainly exists across Europe: illiquid markets always sell below asking.
The bigger a castle is, the less it costs by the square metre. The smallest castles cost around €2,988 a square metre; the largest, over 5,000 square metres, just €775. But let’s be clear, this doesn’t make big castles cheap to buy, €775 a metre is still close to €4 million. The reason why the square metre price decreases is because the buyer pool for giant castles is very very small.
Outside hospitality, there are few ways to make money from a castle. The ones that do earn their keep are mostly run as hotels that also host weddings and events. A castle hotel might have anywhere from 20 to 140 rooms, and because a night in a castle is a rare experience, the rates are premium, from around €300 to €1,800.
But that money is not passive. Roger, founder of the castle-stay platform Celtic Castles, has spent years on the operator side of this market.
“Only if you treat it as an operating business, not a property. Those days are gone. Yield comes from events and experiences, not just rooms.”
Castle-hotel revenue potential*
Looking at the publicly available leases, we can see that hotel operators pay around €750,000 a year to run Ashford Castle and €450,000 for Kilronan. That is rent paid to the owner. Nobody signs a lease like that unless the operation earns several times more. Leases are the clearest proof that a castle hotel is a serious business. Read more about castle hotels below.
A castle’s value is not where most people expect. It is not in the money poured into restoration, not in the size of the building, not in the grandeur of the estate, nor the heritage status. Restoration spend rarely adds to market value, and the largest castles are the cheapest by the square metre. The one thing that reliably lifts a castle’s worth is whether it earns its keep. A castle is not a passive asset. Its value does not rise on its own, and an owner who treats it like one is almost certain to lose money. The two cases below illustrate this point.
€1.24 million spent, nothing gained
€0added to its valueChâteau de Lalande was a labour of love. Over twenty years its owner poured €1.24 million into restoring it, and by her own reckoning it added nothing to the property value. It was revalued in 2020 at almost exactly the original purchase price.
“I do not think it will have put even €1 on the value.”— the owner
£2.5 million in, £5.6 million out
+124%over eleven yearsDalhousie Castle more than doubled in value, up 124% over eleven years. The difference from Lalande was simple: it ran as a 29-room hotel the entire time it was owned. It earned its keep, and the price reflected it.
£2.5m → £5.6m
The people searching for castles are mostly not from the countries they are searching in. English-speaking buyers look for Scottish castles more than any other, with France second, and the single biggest search of all is Americans hunting for French châteaux, around 7,900 a month. Ireland, England and Germany follow, and the Mediterranean barely registers. Across roughly 260 castle-buying terms, monthly searches total around 51,000.
Where English-speaking buyers are looking — castle-for-sale searches by destination
These are English-language searches from the US and UK, so they measure international, English-speaking buyer demand, not total demand. A German or Italian buyer searching in their own language is not captured. That is why France, Scotland and Ireland lead and the Mediterranean looks quiet: this is where foreign interest concentrates, not where all demand is.
The sample
Every listing is a verified castle with a real asking price and floor area. All figures are asking prices; verified sold prices, where we have them, come from France’s national land registry. Full methodology is in the report.
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How to cite
Research and analysis by Astutely, in partnership with Castle Collector.