Castle town

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A castle town is a town or city built adjacent to or surrounding a castle.

Castle towns are common in Medieval Europe, where towns would form around ancient Roman fortresses. A good example is London, which sprang up around ancient Londinium and Paris, which arose from Lutetia, but the model is better preserved in small towns like Alnwick and Arundel, which are still dominated by their castles.

In Western Europe, and England particularly, it is common for cities and towns that were not castle towns to instead have been organized around cathedrals.

The phenomenon of castle towns is of course not restricted to Europe, though it took on different forms in other parts of the world. Towns organized around Japanese castles are called jōkamachi (城下町, ^?).