mcpbeat

Castles MCP Server

com.thecastlemap/castles
answering

Castles is answering right now. Last checked 12 min ago. It exposes 7 tools. Last commit 22 Jul 2026.

2,400 castles, fortresses & palaces: name search, nearby, fame ranking, statistics. No key, CC0.

Uptime history 40 hours of history
40 hours agonow
100.0%
Uptime 24h
91 of 91 checks
7
Tools
read from the server
198 ms
Response time
average over 24h
0
Stars
last commit 22 Jul 2026

Connect this server

Endpoint below is the one we actually reach during checks — not the one copied from a README. Last verified 12 min ago.

run in your terminal
claude mcp add castles --transport http https://thecastlemap.com/mcp
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "castles": {
      "url": "https://thecastlemap.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}
~/.codex/config.toml
[mcp_servers.castles]
url = "https://thecastlemap.com/mcp"
.cursor/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "castles": {
      "url": "https://thecastlemap.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}
.vscode/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "castles": {
      "url": "https://thecastlemap.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Available tools 7

Read directly from the server with tools/list, grouped by what they act on. If a tool disappears, we record the date.

castles
castles_near
List landmarks within a radius of a WGS84 coordinate, nearest first, each with distance_km. Radius defaults to 100 km (max 2,000). For "castles near <place>", geocode the place yourself, then call this with its latitude/longitude.
search_castles
Search the atlas’s 6,412 castles, fortresses, palaces and ruins by name (accent- and case-insensitive substring match). Optionally filter by country (name or ISO code) and category. Results come best-match-first, then by fame; each has coordinates, founding century, fame rank and links to its atlas page and Wikipedia. If nothing matches, retry with a shorter fragment of the name.
castle
get_castle
Fetch one landmark’s full record by slug (preferred, e.g. "palace-of-versailles") or exact name: coordinates, founding year and century, worldwide fame rank, photo URL, Wikipedia link and its readership signals (Wikidata sitelinks, annual Wikipedia pageviews). Unsure of the slug? Call search_castles first.
countries
list_countries
Every country in the atlas with its landmark count, most first — answers "which country has the most castles" (Germany leads). Returns country name and ISO code per row; country pages are browsable from the countries_index URL.
random
random_castle
One random landmark with its full record, optionally limited to a country — for discovery, quizzes and "castle of the day" features.
statistics
get_statistics
Headline statistics computed live from the atlas: totals by type, top countries, busiest founding century, oldest landmarks, geographic extremes and the most famous entry. The source for claims like "which country has the most castles" or "when were castles built"; the full write-up lives at thecastlemap.com/statistics/.
top
top_castles
The most famous landmarks worldwide or in one country, ordered by Castlemap fame rank — a blend of Wikipedia coverage and readership; rank 1 is the most famous (Numantia). The direct answer to "most famous castles in <country>"; filter by country and/or category.

Endpoints

URLTransportStateLatencyChecked
https://thecastlemap.com/mcp streamable-http answering 192 ms 12 min ago

Castles — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can Castles do?
It exposes 7 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: castles_near, get_castle, get_statistics, list_countries, random_castle, search_castles and 1 more. The full list with descriptions is on this page — we take it from the server itself via tools/list, not from a README. How MCP servers expose tools in the first place →
Is Castles working right now?
We send a real MCP handshake every 15 minutes. Over the last 24 hours 91 of 91 checks got a reply (100.0%), average response time 198 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.
How do I connect Castles?
Copy the ready config from this page — we generate it for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor and VS Code, each with the file path that client actually reads. It is a remote server, so there is nothing to install — the client connects to the address.
Does Castles need an API key?
No. Castles completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 7 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.
How fast is Castles?
It answers our handshake in 198 ms on average, which is faster than 63% of all working MCP servers we measure. The comparison comes from our own checks across the whole registry, every 15 minutes.
Is Castles open source?
Yes — it is published under the MIT licence, written in JavaScript and 0 stars on GitHub. The source link is on this page, so you can read exactly what it does with your data before you connect it.