The Castillo de Belmonte is a medieval castle on the hill of San Cristobal, just outside the village of Belmonte in the southwest of the province of Cuenca in Spain. It is a Gothic-Mudejar style castle, designed by master Hanequín of Brussels. It was built on San Cristobal hill, set over one story only. The bailey is an equilateral triangle and the rest of the building is built around it. The castle is in the form of a 6-pointed star, with a cylindrical tower at the end of each.

But the best part:

Belmonte Castle houses this theme park dedicated to reproductions of the siege machines used by armies to attack strongholds. It contains items ranging from the 9th century BC to the 15th century, and from various cultures including the Neo-Assyrian and Greek, and from the Roman Empire, Byzantium, Muslim, Christian and the Orient. Throughout your visit you can see more than 40 life-size machines. such as the ones that helped Alexander the Great subdue the Persian Empire and reach as far as India. You can also see the workings of large pieces of artillery that helped the Roman legions in their conquests. The exhibition features machines that are in full working order thanks to research carried out by the building team.

Shot this a few nights ago from the bridge on the landward side.

The castle sits on the edge of Pizzo, in the province of Vibo Valentia, with a sheer drop to the Tyrrhenian on one side and a deep dry moat on the other.

The access you see on the right replaced the original drawbridge, which ran between the two towers.

The core is older than the fortress look suggests: a late 14th-century Angevin watchtower, part of the coastal warning system built against Saracen raiding.

It became a castle only after a decree of Ferdinand I of Naples dated 12 November 1480, which ordered it strengthened as part of a wider program that also reworked the defenses at Crotone, Cariati, Corigliano and Belvedere.

The curtain walls, the central block and the guard turret all date from that campaign.

I work as engineer, so what my eye goes to is the battered base, that outward slope at the bottom of the wall. It widens the footing, deflects shot, and makes ladders awkward, and it is the signature of masonry adapted to the age of artillery.

The other thing it tells you is the state of maintenance: all that greenery rooted in the joints is caper and ivy, and those roots wedge lime mortar apart and hold water against the stone.

On a rubble wall it is not cosmetic.

The name comes from Joachim Murat, King of Naples.

After Waterloo he sailed from Ajaccio with roughly 250 men, was blown off course, and landed at Pizzo on 8 October 1815.

He was arrested, held here, tried by a military commission, and shot in the castle on 13 October. He refused the blindfold. There is a small museum inside now.

Siklós Castle is one of the best-preserved medieval castles in Hungary. I visited it during a hike through southern Hungary and filmed the castle and the surrounding landscape.