Abigail Nilsson/Disney
Here’s a bit of Disney trivia for you: Which European castle inspired Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom in Florida? It’s a trick question because no one castle stands as a real-life counterpart to Cinderella Castle, which is a fantasy blend of different inspirations and architectural styles, including Gothic and Romanesque. Pinning down, for travel purposes, which exact castles provided those inspirations can be tricky since there’s a lot of conflicting information out there, pointing to different influences that may or may not have factored into the original design. It only makes things more confusing when word-of-mouth conflates Cinderella Castle with other Disney castles, such as Sleeping Beauty Castle at the original Disneyland in California.
France’s Chateau d’Ussé, for instance, has been cited as one possible model for Cinderella Castle. When you see its Renaissance architecture rising over the wall on a forest’s edge in the Loire Valley, you might feel like you’ve entered a fairytale. Yet the chateau’s website pegs it as “Sleeping Beauty’s Castle” due to its influence on French author Charles Perrault, who penned versions of both tales (which Disney adapted into animated films in the 1950s).
Compared to “Beauty and the Beast,” with its many utterances of “Bonjour,” “Cinderella” might seem less French in its setting. However, several other chateaux and palaces in France (among other European countries) did influence chief castle designer Herbert Ryman. If you’re looking to travel outside Disney, any of these might be worth a visit.
From Versailles to Neuschwanstein Castle
One well-known location in France that reportedly helped influence Cinderella Castle’s elaborate design is the Palace of Versailles. Commissioned by Louis XIV, it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site that receives nearly 15 million annual visitors. At one time, Charles Perrault redesigned the palace’s southern gardens into a hedge maze with animal fountains. While the maze is gone, Perrault is still depicted in art in the palace’s collections.
Disney-loving architects have also noted that Cinderella Castle incorporates hipped mansard roofs, a distinguishing feature of Fontainebleau, a historic chateau that housed every French monarch for 800 years. It’s said to be another inspiration for the castle, along with the chateaux of Chambord and Chaumont, which are located on either side of Fontainebleau within about a three-hour drive of each other.
One famous castle outside France that Disney fans might identify with Cinderella is Germany’s Neuschwanstein Castle. This must-visit place, perched above a gorge in the Bavarian Alps (see above), even appears in the Epcot attraction Soarin’ Around the World, which takes riders on a simulated flight over it and other global landmarks. Disney has confirmed time and again that Neuschwanstein Castle inspired Sleeping Beauty Castle. You can see the influence in the turrets and battered walls of Cinderella’s Castle – and in fact, Herbert Ryman oversaw the design of both iconic palaces. Today, Neuschwanstein is open for guided tours, with a regular horse carriage providing transportation instead of Cinderella’s pumpkin coach.
Alcázar de Segovia and the Disney Vault
A fortress on a rock where two rivers meet, Spain’s Alcázar de Segovia is also sometimes associated with Cinderella Castle. Located about 90 minutes outside Madrid, this castle’s spires and the layout of its base are dead ringers for the ones in the Magic Kingdom. You can almost see how Herbert Ryman might have used it as the foundation for his design, piling other inspirations on top of it and building it out to give it a different look from the base up. That said, Alcázar de Segovia may officially share more of a connection with the castle in Disney’s first animated film, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
In September 2023, reports circulated in major Spanish news sources like El Pais and El Mundo that Disney itself had confirmed the connection with a 100th-anniversary list of locations that inspired its movies and theme park landmarks. Disney plugged the news, too, but the full list soon disappeared from the company’s site, as if it had decided that some secrets were best left tucked away in the infamous Disney Vault.
It’s possible Disney may not want to break the fantasy spell cast by its composite castle, the central landmark of the world’s most-visited theme park. Until it releases an annotated blueprint, you may have to compile your photo evidence in European locales like Prague’s Týn Church — yet another purported inspiration in a continent that seems full of them.
