Honestly I’m supposed to be looking for a new place, but now I’m just looking at castles like, yeah I could make this work.
The catch is that they’re in bumfuck nowhere, really expensive to heat/cool, and just generally not well suited to modern lifestyles as well as being uncomfortable to live in in general.
It’s designed with surviving attack as the primary purpose, everything else is secondary. Sure, it’s luxurious by medieval standards, but any home up to code in the first world is science fiction levels of luxurious by those standards. Indoor plumbing, heating that hits every room, smokeless lighting, cooling, wall to wall carpeting, smokeless cooking… all luxuries you better hope you can install at all, though you probably can’t do it great, and definitely can’t do it inconspicuously.
And that’s not even hitting on the “too big home” problem. People can manage a bigger house than they need, sure, but only to a point. Even a late 20th century mansion is too much for a person who can’t burn a ton of money heating such a large building and doesn’t have servants to do the various tasks associated with such a large home. Just think of all the cleaning required.
Now if you’ve got a decently large polycule/commune/family where everyone is down to do a lot of chores and doesn’t mind not having running water, then this is for you. Hopefully you’ve got an electrician in there because I can’t imagine it’s cheap to have someone safely wire a house with a stone interior, especially to the standards most people want.
Wiring a stone building would be reasonably easy, you’d just have to run everything in conduit.
OK, but restoring a castle is not gonna be cheap. This has “credit cards are great because I don’t have to pay anything for 3 months” vibes.
I’ll move to Italy to accept my free castle and be a hermit and caretaker, so long as it comes with a massive library I can stock with books. I think I’ve found my new life’s calling.
Massive library?
Have you been to a castle 😁
You could have like the summer library of detective stories, the winter library of science, the autumn library of dark eastern writers and the spring library filled with frivolous lecture without even breaking a sweat.
How are you going to pay for the 3000€/month energy bill to keep the thing warm enough to stay reasonably mold-free, while being an hermit?
Easy, I’ll just wait to be contacted on a dark and stormy night by a lawyer in a fancy suit to inform me that my long lost reclusive great grandfather has passed away, and I as the sole remaining heir, have inherited his fortune along with his castle. The only catch is, of course, that in order to accept the inheritance, I must spend a full week sleeping in said castle. After that, bringing on his quirky, and mysterious staff to help me manage and run the place should be no problem. As long as I remember to NEVER set foot in the basement, I’ll be fine.
Well I’d make a good start by installing really good insulating windows throughout. Then there’s probably room and access to put solar panels on the battlements
Don’t be fooled. Castles are so much more expensive than you think. They are heritage sites, you are obligated to keep it well maintained. This can cost between 100k to 1m per year, or even much more depending on the state and size. Next to that you’re not allowed to insulate it or replace the windows with double glass, so you will spend thousands per year just not to freeze to death.
The reason these castles are so cheap is because the state is in poor condition and the current owner doesn’t have the funds to fix it to regulatory standards. So you can assume you will spend 5 to 10m (if not more) into it after buying it, then to have the previous mentioned yearly maintenance costs on top of that.
I know because my French branch of the family used to live in a castle.
If you fail to keep the castle in shape you can get serious fines and even lose ownership. And depending on the country, prison time.
Then there are the taxes that are not fun at all.
So when you buy one, make sure you have at least 20m ready to spend the first 1 to 5 years. But to be sure you won’t go bankrupt, better have 50m as a target as costs always end up much higher than expected. It happens a lot, people buying a castle then to go bankrupt due to the insanely high maintenance costs.
Ooh, I’m liking Kinloch Castle on the Isle of Rum! (Better than the nearby Isle of Muck, for sure!) Only £750,000! Sure it’s a fixer-upper, but it includes a Steinway piano, an orchestrion, and “Victorian bathrooms with multi-function shower cabinets!” Whatever the heck those are, and they aren’t shown in the video. Neither is the kitchen. At least the local community is in support of getting it bought and renovated. I don’t know why all those billionaires are building ugly bunkers from scratch instead of putting them under the wine cellar of an island castle.
Edit: Well I still don’t have a picture of the castle bathrooms but “multi-function shower cabinets” might refer to fixtures like these, with an overhead shower, all-around needle spray, liver and kidney spray, and bidet.
No moat, no sale.
Sail*
Cool, you can have a leaky, rotting pile of stone in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, or a swanky apartment right in the middle of NYC.
Buying the castle would only be the start.
Yeah but like… what if my dream isn’t to own an overpriced done up apartment in the middle of a noisy polluted city around millions of other people where you sit in traffic just to get anywhere?
You do you, but buying something like that castle would be like buying a boat.
The purchase price is just the start.
If you can afford 1.6million for a NYC apartment, you can afford 1.3million and upkeep for a castle. People don’t buy luxury NYC apartments to live in. They buy them to peacock to other rich people. At least if you have a castle, you’re creative with your peacocking.
If you live in the middle of NYC, you’re not getting stuck in traffic because you’re not driving.
They will only give you a castle if you’re already wealthy, it’s a whole process to check you have existing assets. They’re not giving castles to random people with ordinary income.
Socialism for the rich!
I mean, the poor literally don’t have the means to restore a castle. Let alone afford the utilities.
Even if I don’t do the upkeep, what are they going to do to me? Lay siege?
What does it mean access to the chapel and East Wing? Are those… not included? Is it a museum or something?
Great, I want one.
Italy must be the most incompetent country there ever was if they can’t even keep track of a few hundred castles. something tells me that user has their facts wrong
Well… Italian bureaucracy isn’t famous for being punctual and efficient.
There’s no way that castle only has 6 bedrooms.
Indeed, but there is also a music room, a great hall, entrance hall, atrium, reading room, dining room, servants hall, 10 sets of servants quarters, kicthen, pantry, laundry room, stables and coal storage room.
the other rooms are dungeaons.
What if I just want one so I can hold a sword up in front of it an yell “I HAVE THE POWER!” like He-man? Can I still get one? Guys, why are you walking away?
