10 Secret Rooms in Famous Castles From 19th century torture chambers to the
hidden bathrooms of the Vatican City, today we’re talking about 10 secret rooms in famous
castles! 1. The Murder Castle
The Muder Castle is the name given to the World’s Fair Hotel, a now destroyed building
located about 3 miles west of the 1893 Chicago World Fair.
The hotel was owned by H. H. Holmes, America’s first documented serial killer who murdered
27 people in the secret rooms and torture chambers he specifically built for this purpose.
The hotel was full of soundproofed rooms and disorienting mazes of hallways, some of which
seemed to go nowhere. Many of the rooms had trap doors with slides that would drop straight
down to the basement where Holmes disposed of his victims' bodies.
The basement was allegedly filled to the brim with acid vats, pits of quicklime, and a crematorium,
which Holmes used to finish off his victims. Holmes was arrested in 1894 and sentenced
to death by hanging. Shortly after he was arrested and executed, his hotel was destroyed
in a fire started by an unknown arsonist. The Murder Castle was later rebuilt and used
as a post office. The site is now occupied by the Englewood branch of the U.S. Post Office
and often cited as one of Chicago’s most haunted locations.
2. Bran Castle Maybe you’re not familiar with Bran Castle,
but I bet you know all about its most famous inhabitant – Count Dracula. Hidden deep
in Romania’s Transylvanian Mountains, Bran Castle was originally built as a stronghold
for the knights of the Teutonic Order. Vlad III Dracula, better known as Vlad the
Impaler, was the ruler of Romania’s Wallachia region between in the late 1400s. Count Dracula
was infamous for his brutal acts of war, which included impaling the bodies of his enemies
and citizens on large spikes. Hence the nickname Vlad the Impaler.
Today, Dracula’s castle is one of the most famous landmarks in Europe and hundreds of
thousands of tourists from all over the world flock there every year. However, there is
a lot more to Bran Castle than meets the eye. After the castle was given to Queen Marie
in 1918 by the people of Romania, one of her workers stumbled upon a secret passage that
had been lost for hundreds of years. This steep, narrow passageway is built directly
into the wall and connects the first floor to the third floor of Dracula’s castle.
According to historians, it was used by officers as an escape route in case of emergency, but
by the looks of it, you would think it came straight out of a horror film set.
3. Glamis Castle Glamis Castle may not be a pop culture landmark
like Dracula’s castle, but the dark legends surrounding it are just as terrifying.
This 14th century castle is located near the village of Glamis in Angus, Scotland and it
is the home of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne.
While often called the most beautiful castle in Scotland, Glamis is also known for hiding
a dark secret. According to legend, from around the 1840s
until 1905, the castle was home to a man who was too hideous and violent to be seen in
public so he lived out his days in a secret chamber in the castle.
According to an article published in the journal Notes & Queries in 1908: “In this chamber
is confined a monster, who is the rightful heir to the title and property, but who is
so unpresentable that it is necessary to keep him out of sight and out of possession.”
Several Victorian-era guests at Glamis Castle reported that a child born to the Bowes-Lyons
family was so horribly deformed that he could never be allowed to inherit the title. His
family decided to lock him up in a secret chamber in the castle where his ghost is said
to still reside. 4. Vyborg Castle
Vyborg Castle is a 13th-century fortress built at the easternmost point of the medieval Swedish
Kingdom. From the 14th century all the way until World War II, the castle protected the
Swedish border from the invaders from the east.
In 2018, massive excavations at medieval Vyborg allowed archaeologists to explore the site
like never before. Just a month after the excavations started,
one of the archeologists discovered a hidden spiral staircase with uneven steps which led
to a secret crypt at the bottom. They also discovered two items in the crypt
- a purse containing gold coins that dated back to the early 19th century and a clay
brick that had a medieval board game etched into its surface.
The board game was known as Nine Men’s Morris, and according to historians, it was a primitive
form of checkers. Excavations are still ongoing and archeologists believe there are plenty
more secrets to be found at Vyborg Castle. 5. Predjama Castle
The Predjama Castle is a unique-looking castle carved into a rock above the town of Predjama,
in south-central Slovenia. Many stories and legends surround the Predjama Castle and its
most famous inhabitants, Erasmus of Predjama. Erasmus was a 15th century ruler of Predjama
Castle who came into conflict with the Habsburgs after he killed the commander of the imperial
army in Vienna. The commander had offended the honor of Erasmus’ deceased friend Andrej
Baumkircher of Vipava so Erasmus decided to take revenge.
However, Erasmus later found out that the commander was a relative of Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick III so he decided to flee back to Slovenia and hide in his castle, Predjama,
to escape punishment. At the entrance of the Predjama Castle there
is a little hidden room in the rock where the Habsburgs eventually found and killed
Erasmus. According to legend, Erasmus was hit with a cannonball as he sat on the toilet
in the little room. Despite his unheroic death, the ghost of Erasmus of Predjama is believed
to still haunt the castle to this day. The story about the next secret room on our
list is even more intriguing. But before we move on, take a second to hit the subscribe
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6. Warwick Castle Warwick Castle was originally built by William
the Conqueror in 1068. It is located on a bend of the River Avon, in the county town
of Warwickshire, England. The Castle is known for its many secret rooms, including a bear
pit which was only discovered in 2013. The bear pit was used as an arena for the
cruel sport of bear baiting. The poor animal would be tied to a pole in the center of the
room and pitted against another animal or human.
But there’s another hidden room in the Warwick Castle that hides an even darker secret. The
room was discovered in the Watergate Tower, which is believed to be haunted. The ghost
in the room is that of Sir Fulke Greville, an Elizabethan poet, dramatist, and statesman
who lived in the Warwick Castle for some time until he was brutally murdered in 1628.
Legend has it that Sir Greville was stabbed by a servant who was upset that his master
didn’t include him in his will. The servant first stabbed Greville and then turned the
knife on himself. Greville somehow survived the stabbing only to face an even more gruesome
end. The Elizabethan doctors tried to treat Greville’s
wound by stuffing it with pig fat because they believed the fat would disinfect it.
But rather than disinfecting it, the pig fat turned rancid and the wound became infected.
After a few weeks of unbearable agony, Sir Greville died a painful death.
7. Mont Sainte-Odile In 2003, a French book collector called Stanislas
Gosse stole over 1,000 ancient books from a locked private library in the Mont Sainte-Odile,
a monastery located 2,500 feet up in the Vosges mountains in the French region of Alsace.
The monastery dates to the 7th century AD and is dedicated to St. Odile of Alsace, a
Roman Catholic saint who was born blind, but miraculously recovered her sight after being
baptized. It was Gosse who discovered hidden stairways
that led into a long-forgotten medieval library filled with thousands of rare historical books.
None of the monks or staff at the monastery were aware of the existence of the secret
passage until the books started disappearing. It is thought that the secret passage was
originally built to allow senior members of the monastery to listen in on monk’s conversations
inside the common room. After the police set up hidden cameras to
catch Gosse in the act, he was arrested and sentenced to community service which involved
helping catalog the books in the library at Sainte-Odile.
What’s interesting is that Gosse wasn’t even a professional thief and his act was
inspired only by his love of rare books. All of the books stolen from the monastery were
later found safely in Gosse’s tiny apartment. 8. Welbeck Abbey
Welbeck Abbey is the site of a monastery belonging to the Premonstratensian order, located in
the Dukeries in North Nottinghamshire, England. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in
the 16th century, it became a country house residence of the Dukes of Portland.
One of the Dukes became famous for building a secret tunnel complex that radiated out
from the house. The Duke, whose full name and title is William John Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck,
5th Duke of Portland, spent more than 18 years and about £2 million a year in today’s
money to build the tunnels.
He also employed as many as 1,500 workers, many of whom were the same Irish labourers
who built the London Underground. The Duke built four main tunnels in total, with the
longest one being one-and-a-half-miles long.
So why did he go through all this trouble to build a secret tunnel complex? The truth
is no one knows. There’s a lot of speculation among historians as to why the Duke decided
to construct such an intricate network of tunnels. One line of thought is that he may
have suffered from the skin condition known as Psoriasis and wanted to withdraw from the
public eye. Others believe that the Duke was obsessed with technology and simply enjoyed
the process of building complex structures.
The Duke and his obsession with tunnels inspired Scottish novelist Kenneth Grahame to create
the character of Mr. Badger for his classic children novel The Wind in the Willows. Mr.
Badger is a “wise hermit" figure who famously believed that “there’s no security, or
peace or tranquility, except underground.”
9. Versailles The Palace of Versailles is one of the most
famous historical monuments in the world and home to some of the greatest works of art
ever created. But besides housing over 6,000 paintings and 3,000 sculptures, Versailles
is also home to many hidden rooms. One of these hidden rooms was used by none
other than Queen Marie-Antoinette. The door to the secret room was hidden in the tapestry
of Marie Antoinette's bedroom wall and the passage led to a network of corridors different
from the ones used by Marie-Antoinette’s husband, King Louis XVI.
The architects built the separate corridors because they thought it was better to prevent
the queen from accessing the rooms of her husband’s mistresses. However, it turned
out that they shouldn’t have bothered constructing any hidden rooms for Louis XVI because not
only did the King never have an affair, but it took him seven years to consummate his
marriage with Marie-Antoinette. 10. Vatican City
Vatican City’s famous landmarks are full of secret rooms and passageways, but perhaps
the most intriguing secret room is, surprisingly, a bathroom in the private papal apartments.
The bathroom is referred to as Stufetta della Bibbiena, which means the "small heated room
of Cardinal Bibbiena." It originally served as the washing room for Cardinal Bibbiena,
a 16th century Italian cardinal and comedy writer.
According to Tony Perrottet, author of "A Journey Through the Historic Underbelly of
Europe," the tiny bathroom was painted by the Renaissance master Raphael in 1516.
This notoriously secret room is off limits to the general public but Perrottet managed
to convince one of the clerics to take him in for a five minute tour. Although Perrottet
was not allowed to take any photographs, he made a few drawings and described the images
he saw in his book. Perrottet described the room as filled with
erotic frescoes such as an engraving of naked Venus doing her hair by the lake and an image
of Pan, the half-human, half-goat deity from Greek mythology.
Which of these secret rooms would you like to visit the most? Let me know in the comment
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