Castle Coloring Pages

Every child draws a castle at some point: a square with battlements on top, a pointed tower, a flag. These castle coloring pages start there and then open the doors, so that a child can color not only the walls but the kitchen, the library, the treasure room and the well in the courtyard.

The castles themselves come first. One crowns a hill with a winding road up to its gate, one rises from a still lake with its reflection and the moon beneath it, one glows at sunrise with rays fanning behind its towers, one stands in autumn among swirling leaves, one sits under snow with smoke curling from its chimneys, and a castle of ice shines with icicles on every ledge. A chibi castle with fat towers sits on a little hill, and a castle is seen through an arch covered in climbing roses. Around the walls there is a drawbridge over a moat full of swans, a portcullis gateway with torch brackets, a rope bridge over a deep gorge, a watchtower on a sea cliff and a stone wall with ivy.

Inside, a cutaway shows three floors at once, from the bedroom to the kitchen. There is a spiral staircase lit by narrow windows, a kitchen with copper pots, a great hall with a long table and a hound asleep by the fire, a library with a rolling ladder and a globe, a treasure chamber with goblets and a crown, and a well in the courtyard. The people of the castle have their pages: a knight on a decorated horse, a princess on a balcony with doves, a young queen in her crown, a falconer on the battlements, a boy grooming a horse in the stable yard, a market in the courtyard, and a tournament field with striped tents. A dragon sleeps curled around a tower, a wizard's tower leans with a bottle in every window, and two sandcastles stand on the beach, one with a seagull on top and one waiting for the tide. A castle mandala and a border of gothic arches complete the set.

What each part of a castle is for

Real castles were built to be defended, and almost every shape in these drawings has a job.

• The battlements, the gaps along the top of the walls, let archers shoot out and duck back behind the stone.
• The moat kept attackers and their ladders away from the walls.
• The drawbridge could be pulled up by chains so the moat could not be crossed.
• The portcullis was a heavy iron grille that dropped down to block the gate in seconds.
• Arrow slits, the narrow windows by the spiral staircase, were wide on the inside and thin on the outside, so a defender could aim but was hard to hit.
• Spiral staircases in towers usually turned clockwise going up, which is said to have left a right-handed defender coming down with room to swing a sword.

Most real castles were built in Europe between about 1000 and 1500. The pointed fairytale towers came later, when castles were built for beauty rather than defense, like Neuschwanstein in Germany, which inspired many storybook castles.

Who lived in a castle

A castle was a small town behind walls. Besides the lord and lady and their children, it housed knights and soldiers, a steward who ran the household, cooks and kitchen boys, a blacksmith, grooms for the horses, a falconer for the hunting birds, a priest for the chapel, and servants for everything else. Markets were held in the outer courtyard on fixed days, and in times of war the villagers from the lands around crowded inside with their animals. Most of the people on these pages, the groom in the stable yard, the falconer on the walls, the stallholders on market day, would have been there every day.

Coloring stone that looks real

Castle walls are not one gray.

• Color the whole wall in a light gray, then pick out a few stones in warmer tones, beige, pale brown, a gray-blue, so the wall looks built from real blocks.
• Press harder under each battlement and around each window, where shadows fall.
• Roofs of pointed towers are often slate blue-gray or red-brown tiles.
• Flags and banners are where the color goes: bold red, blue, gold and green.
• The ice castle looks best in pale blues and lilacs, with white left for the shine.

Simple castles and detailed halls

The simplest pages keep one castle large against the sky, like the ice castle, the chibi castle and the watchtower. Quick to color, above the grid, begins with:

• Ice castle
• Sandcastle and the tide
• Watchtower on the cliff

The densest are made of hundreds of stone blocks and shelves, like the portcullis, the ivy wall and the library. Lots of detail begins with:

• The portcullis
• Castle wall with ivy
• Market day

Build a paper castle

Several of these pages combine into a castle that stands up. Color the ivy wall and the portcullis gateway, cut them out and glue them onto thin card. Fold a strip of card into a square tube for each tower, glue the colored towers from the hilltop castle page around them, and connect them with the wall pages. The drawbridge page makes the front, and the flags can be cut from the border page and taped to toothpicks. It is an afternoon's project, and a good home for toy knights.

Printing a kingdom

Every page is a free A4 PDF drawn at 300 dpi. A4 prints at full size, and on US Letter "fit to page" shrinks the drawing by about six percent so the tallest flag stays on the sheet. The printing guide shows where to find it. Add to pack gathers a whole kingdom into one file. The castle's residents continue in the princess coloring pages and the dragon coloring pages, more magic in the fantasy coloring pages, and more homes in the house coloring pages.