- Hi, I'm Meredith Cohen.
I'm an architectural historian
specialized in medieval architecture.
Today, I'll be breaking down for you
some of the most famous castles from the Disney films.
First up, we're going to look at the Queen's castle
from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs",
one of Disney's earliest movies made in 1937.
On the left, we see the village.
The little houses are sort of being completely overtaken
by that huge castle up above.
That kind of must allude to how scary
this evil queen was.
This castle is based on the Alcazar of Segovia in Spain.
It was in the middle of a civil war that was initiated
and won by Francisco Franco,
the dictator who took over Spain for many, many years.
And that also may connote this evil dictatorial queen.
So that's the inspiration for what we're looking at here.
First thing that jumps out at me
is really the silhouette and the towers,
with a very triangular profile.
What's interesting is that we have a kind of progression
in time in this castle from early round arch gated opening
to a keep, typical 11-1200,
and then to these added turrets and towers,
which really come into castle architecture when castles
are being used more for residential and reception purposes.
There's just a myriad of all these turrets and towers
that give it a really magical feel and also elevate it.
Give it this sort of uplifting, vertical quality,
adding that little Disney magic.
Many of those wouldn't have existed
in a real original castle.
They were really for moving around the castle.
They had spiral staircases in them.
Here we know that the exaggeration of towers and turrets
is something that Disney's added to their castle
to kind of give it that more magical fantasy-like feel.
We don't even see a walkway up to the gateway there.
It's like the castle's really set apart from the village.
She's isolated and then all this stone.
They are usually on a craggy promontory like this
just so that they're visible from afar,
and so that they're isolated from any enemies.
Very difficult to access.
Makes it seem all the more kind of scarier.
I notice really small windows, some on the side here.
And that's pretty accurate because generally castles
don't have big windows.
They're defensive structures.
At most they'll have what we call arrow loops,
where you can fit your bow into
and defend the castle from these thin arrow loops.
This castle is based on a square inner core
and is very compact.
That's very typical for early castles that have evolved
from towers or keeps.
And these square ones are just a larger version
of the castle keep.
Disney was still figuring out its castle style,
so they haven't quite coined all of the different elements
in the typical Disney castle and in the Disney logo.
Next we're going to be looking at King Stefan's castle
from "Sleeping Beauty".
Here's what jumps out at me.
I see a multi turreted castle.
This castle was inspired
by the Bavarian castle Neuschwanstein,
which was built by King Ludwig of Bavaria in the 1860s.
Almost Neogothic revival style.
Gothic really was built in the 13th and 14th centuries.
So he's building, you know,
400 years later in the same style.
Neuschwanstein shows a kind of nostalgia
and a kind of romantic idealization of the past.
And that's exactly what King Ludwig II was going for.
He wanted to relive those glory days.
He also wanted the castle to look very magical and special.
Many of the towers have battlements
with crenellations, and they're capped by finials
that extend the eye upward into the skyline.
These two turrets have a kind of brace
in between them.
In a structural way, it could help them stand up.
This tower in the middle here is articulated
with tracery and it's got wood battlements
projecting out as opposed to stone ones.
So the turrets are all from kind of different time periods.
This is more of a Gothic turret.
This is more of a Renaissance style turret.
This looks like Scandinavian type of gabled turret.
In the front we have this kind of fore order.
We would call that a barbican.
A little mini fortress in front of a main fortress.
So this kind of looks like an adaptation
of a barbican there.
And within it, we see these cross shape.
Those would be arrow loops.
And then to the left, we have a kind of veranda
on this double pointed arched spaceway.
The pointed arches would suggest that this was built
in the Gothic period anywhere from about 1140 to about 1450.
The addition of all these towers and turrets here
would suggest a later time period, Renaissance castle,
making it more attractive and inviting to come into.
Here I see a tight space between this wall
and the actual castle.
Normally there would be much more space in between.
That space is called a bailey.
It's just space to maneuver your troops and your horses
and to move people around the different parts of the castle.
This castle here became the prototype
for many of Disney's subsequent films
in which a castle is featured.
And the Disney logo is a combination
of two different castles.
Cinderella's castle and Sleeping Beauty's castle.
They both have this kind of triangular composition
with towers and turrets, bringing your eyes upward,
giving it an extra fantastic and magical quality.
And then the triangular silhouette of the Disney logo
is something that we see featured in many castles
in Disney films.
The next castle we're looking at is Corona Castle
that's featured in the movie "Tangled".
First thing that jumps out at me is that Disney
is once again using the Cinderella prototype of castle.
Here we have this triangular composition with tall towers
leading the eye upward,
and they're capped by these bronze colored domes
with pinnacles or finials on top of them.
We have a kind of Gothic projection sticking out there.
Gothic church-like shape there.
Here's more of a castle structure at the foundation.
And then below, we see the houses
of the village that are made of wood.
And the whole thing is on this island
in the middle of flat, you know, rippling water.
And we can see galleons to the side. Very large ships.
So that water must be very, very deep.
We have a kind of bridgeway or causeway
to this island that also must be very deep foundations
underneath the bridge.
It's not very realistic.
It is typical for castles to be built in stone
because that is the most expensive building material.
So it's very normal that we would see little houses
being built of wood below because wood didn't cost as much.
These are kind of typical what we call timber trust houses.
This castle breaks with the Disney tradition
because there is no front and center causeway
going up inviting the viewer into the castle.
It's pushed off to the side here by this bridge.
Otherwise it's on this island that is surrounded by water.
Therefore makes it very, very difficult to access.
This particular castle was clearly inspired
by Mont Saint-Michel.
It's a little island off of Normandy in France.
It actually was a Benedictine abbey founded in 708.
Many different additions were made
to the abbey of Mont Saint-Michel,
and the upper part of it today is a combination
of Romanesque and Gothic features.
So they're actually using a church
as a kind of castle inspiration here.
Mont Saint-Michel is so perfect
for "Tangled" because it's an island.
The tides go in and out,
and you can only access this space twice a day in real life,
Mont Saint-Michel, at low tide.
Over time Mont Saint-Michel became a prison
in the 19th century.
So that must refer in some way to Rapunzel
who was locked up in a prison.
And then she would throw her hair out
when she wanted her suitor to come meet her,
and then bring it back in.
So it's like the tides going out and in
were like Rapunzel's hair being thrown out and in.
This castle's an excellent example
of incorporating a structure into the story.
Next up is the Castle DunBroch from the movie "Brave".
So this is a stone castle.
What's interesting is that it actually looks
very kind of run down and old.
This suggests that this castle has been around
for a really, really long time.
This story, "Brave", is actually supposed to be set
in the 10th century,
but we know that castles were only built in stone
from the 11th century on.
What's also a little bit odd
is that if you're living in a castle,
you don't let it fall into ruin while you're living in it.
We have an entryway into this gatehouse.
Normally that would be a fortified gatehouse
with a portcullis, which is an iron grill
that can come down for defensive purposes here.
And we have this kind of trodden path
that looks kind of old, and there's no closure.
And then what are these stairs
on the side and where do they go?
They don't seem to go directly to the gatehouse,
Here we're looking at a battlement,
which is a corbled out super structure
on the keep here.
It's used for defensive purposes.
It allows those who are on top of the battlement
to throw stones to defend themselves.
We can see some crenellations,
and a crenellation is that tooth formation
where you have a merlon sticking up,
and then the crenel is that low part.
The merlon can be used
as a kind of shield when people are throwing things
at you from afar and you need to defend your castle.
So you would hide behind the merlon
and then you would move into the crenel
to throw your rocks or shoot your arrows.
So this castle is very run down.
It may refer to an aspect in the story
where the four clans are at odds with each other
and they need to be reunited and brought together.
They're dysfunctional, like the castle.
The family lives inside this keep here.
And this one actually has zero windows.
And it's normal that a keep would have no windows
because they're made for siege warfare.
But there would be spaces for air,
and there would be arrow loops,
so that people could defend themselves from inside.
We do have this curtain wall and this open space
within it for activities.
For repairing your horse spurs or workman stalls
inside this area, to prepare those, to go out.
This castle is said to be inspired
by two real Scottish castles.
Eilean Donan is one of them and Dunnottar Castle
are both very old castles
with somewhat horizontal profile as this one has.
With its gatehouse and the curtain walls,
and the keep on the left in this isolated position.
This is the most realistic
of the Disney castles I've seen so far.
Let's take a look now at the Sultan's palace in "Aladdin".
So what I'm looking at here is a palace that is modeled
on the Cinderella style with that kind of triangular profile
and many turrets, but really what jumps out
is this huge onion dome at the top of the central tower.
And then the multiplication of those throughout the space
of this castle here.
I've never seen real castle like this.
This one also has a processional staircase
that moves up into an arched doorway or portal.
It's based on a pointed arch,
which can refer to an Islamic arch.
This one looks more Gothic to me, but the pointed arch
is believed to have been actually created
in Islamic architecture.
We have one more of those supporting buttresses
that keep the towers braced and standing up.
So that's unusual.
And then the whole thing stands
on this kind of platform here.
And there are these sort of large bases for these towers.
The door is turquoise.
So that does remind me of architecture in India.
That's very colorful and often has
this kind of turquoise color.
And so they're collapsing kind of Islamic
and Hindu architecture.
The Sultan's palace is based on the Taj Mahal of India,
which was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan
starting in 1632.
It was built for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal.
The Taj Mahal actually is a mausoleum.
It's where her tomb lies and where his tomb lies as well.
Sultan's palace is a kind of caricature of the Taj Mahal.
The Taj Mahal is made of white marble,
with inlaid with different colored stones, super refined.
And this one, it's hard to tell,
maybe they're alluding to the white marble of the Taj Mahal,
but it kind of looks like, you know,
just stone plastered over.
It's hard to know what the material
of these onion domes are.
They're alluding to bronze,
having them be bronze stones,
but then they're so exaggerated.
I think that it's just too big and it would be too heavy,
and it's very unlikely that the tower below
could support this.
And then you see some detailing here
underneath that almost looks like
a kind of Islamic bracelet
with all that fine gold filigree work.
But with these onion domes, it reminds me more
of St. Basil's Cathedral in the Kremlin
than it really does of the Taj Mahal.
because the Taj Mahal really only has that one central dome.
And it has four minarets.
which are just towers to call prayers from.
So these here aren't minarets at all.
It really looks more like
this kind of Russian Orthodox church architecture.
So they're collapsing a lot of different cultures
into one thing here.
They do have a note in front of their film now,
acknowledging that it was made
from a different time and collapsing
of so many different cultures into one thing
would be considered offensive.
It was Disney's first attempt
to create a non-Western castle.
And they really took some liberties here
in the cultures they pulled from to make this
a kind of magical and fantastic Disney castle.
Let's take a look now at Arendelle from the movie "Frozen".
Again, that Cinderella prototype
of that triangular composition of a castle.
Surrounded by walls here and extension into a kind of jetty.
The main castle inside has many gables in the center.
This would be a bell tower capped by a kind of spire.
"Frozen" is based off a kind of Scandinavian legend.
This outer fortification structure is referring
to Akershus Fort near Oslo in Norway.
And it does have vertical stone wall quality.
The castle, the actual residence on the inside,
this wood building first of all that we're looking at.
So that's a real difference
from all the other castles we've looked at.
This one is wood.
You can see the different timber trusses there
crossing vertically and horizontally.
We have three gables ascending to that top bell tower.
And that reminds me a lot of these Norwegian stave churches
such as the one at Borgund.
Borgund is a stave church built of wood in the 1200s.
It's extraordinary that it still stands today.
A stave is a kind of wood panel
that has interlocking grooves holding them together.
And this hybrid structure is the combination
of the fortress and that they've adapted
the church structure as a kind of fantastic looking
palace on the inside.
They do that because churches are often
the most exciting architecture in the Middle Ages.
They're the most beautiful.
And in Scandinavia or in Norway,
which they are very breathtaking.
This window here made as a kind of triangle
and it has some ice tracery on the inside there.
That's not at all accurate.
And this long wall is very unusual.
It almost reminds me of the Great Wall of China
that goes over all the hills and valleys.
So that's unusual.
A wall would demarcate territory
and it's also there for defense and safe keeping, right?
To keep people inside or to mark a boundary.
This wall is more like a rampart.
It almost looks like you can walk in between
those two edges there, and then it has a tower.
I'm not really sure what the function is.
It's just adding to this kind of,
you know, fantastic setting.
Another view of Arendelle has us looking
at a very symmetrical curtain wall
with a gate in the middle of it,
and a processional route going straight up to it.
It's very unlike a medieval castle,
which is a defensive structure
and would not want people just processing
straight into the middle of it.
So the Scandinavian architecture
that we're looking at here reflects the origins
of this story, which is Scandinavian myth.
So those are the architectural details I noticed
in the Disney castles.
Let me know what you think in the comments.