Castles continue to exert a great fascination to this day. Are they not the home of legendary knights and enchanting castle maidens, a stone embodiment of claims to power and a refuge offering safety? But what is fantasy, and how was it really? This book introduces readers to the world of castles based on current knowledge. What is a castle? What functions did it serve? How was it designed? Where were the wells, the residential buildings, and the chapel located? Was there a dungeon? What is a palas and what is a kemenate? Who lived there and what was life like in a castle? The founder of the German Castle Museum and the general director of the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg, G. Ulrich Grossmann, provides an overview of the development of castle structures from the early Middle Ages to the recent past and shows how a castle myth was already established in the High Middle Ages, which continues to this day.