The best-known castles and palaces in Northern Ireland
Ordered by how much has been written about each place. The numbers match the map.
The north coast has a run of them: Dunluce Castle 10 km from Coleraine, with Kinbane Castle further along the shore. Around Strangford Lough, Newtownards is the base for Scrabo Tower (2 km), Mount Stewart (7 km), Castle Ward and Audley's Castle. Carrickfergus Castle stands in its own town, Belfast Castle is 3 km from Newtownabbey, Hillsborough Castle 8 km from Lisburn, and Newry has Bagenal's Castle in town and the Narrow Water Keep (1560) 8 km out.
RLQuest knows 80 named castles and country houses in Northern Ireland, 39 of them with a Wikipedia article. When one of your daily quests leads to a castle, the app confirms the arrival from your recorded route, and the shoreline tiles you walked turn yours.
Every dot is a place. The numbers mark the highlights listed below.
Ordered by how much has been written about each place. The numbers match the map.
A selection, best known first, with the nearest larger town next to each.
and 28 more
RLQuest knows these places too. Which means:
Some of your daily quests lead to a real place near you. The app uses your location to check you were really there.
If you're the first person in RLQuest to complete a quest at a place, it's your first find. The Place Book shows you which kinds of place you're still missing.
Every walk uncovers tiles, each about 350 m across. Over time you can see which corners you know well, and where you've never set foot.
Place data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License. Borders: geoBoundaries (CC BY 4.0); Canada: Statistics Canada. As of 2026-10-02. The list shows the places RLQuest knows and isn't complete. Photos come from Wikimedia Commons; author and license are credited on each photo.
