Eilean Donan Castle, Scotland

Sunrise over Eilean Donan, a stone castle on a tiny island where three sea lochs, Duich, Long and Alsh, meet in the western Highlands. The arched footbridge on the right is the only way across, and it makes the whole scene look like an illustration. The romance is partly a twentieth-century creation. Royal Navy frigates bombarded the castle in May 1719, when Spanish troops supporting the Jacobites held it, and it was then blown up and left in ruins for two centuries. Lt-Col John MacRae-Gilstrap bought the island in the 1910s and rebuilt the castle, which formally opened in 1932. What you see is a careful reconstruction rather than medieval fabric, set in about as dramatic a spot as a castle can have.