A Medieval-Style Castle is For Sale in Northeastern Connecticut

Its history is bizarre and compelling

For Sale sign
There are interesting listings to be found on Zillow.
Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Imagine a vast and sprawling castle, full of detailed interiors and precise craftsmanship. Picture a design so ornate, in fact, that this building was used as the location for a movie set against the backdrop of European nobility. Where would you find such a structure? You might think the answer to that is “somewhere in central or eastern Europe,” but you’d be several thousand miles off base. Instead, the castle in question can be found in the town of Woodstock, Connecticut — and its history can be measured in decades rather than centuries.

An article at Digg breaks down the history and eye-catching design of Chris Mark Castle, which is currently on the market. Writer Rebecca Makkai took a look at the building’s history on Twitter with a genuinely epic thread that balances a look at the castle’s excesses with some of the more unsettling details of its history. (It involves, among other things, a camel starving to death.)

In 2014, Curbed explored the castle’s history, which includes some deeply strange aspects — including its owner’s foray into running a modeling agency, and the use of genuinely cringeworthy language to promote it. Add in news of a nasty divorce and the presence of exotic animals and you have a narrative that’s probably going to be turned into a documentary miniseries by the time you’re done reading this.

Perhaps going viral has its advantages, though. At the time that Makkai posted about the castle, its price was listed at $35 million. On Sunday, however, its price increased dramatically — now, if you’d like to call this castle home, it’ll cost you $60 million.

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