Some castles were surrounded by deep ditches called moats to stop attackers getting in. Some moats were filled with water, like Caerlaverock Castle near Dumfries (above). Attackers would have to swim or row across the moats to get to the castle.
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Outer curtain wallsThose valiant enough to make it across the moat were faced with the highly forbidding outer curtain wall. Surrounding the courtyards of castles, outer curtain walls were often built to imposing heights of over 30 feet and were thick enough to withstand attacks from battering rams.
Build thick walls and battlementsThe castle also has high 'curtain walls' which protect the castle's inner and outer 'wards' or 'baileys'. These are the courtyard areas inside the walls where important buildings like the keep, or perhaps stables and storehouses would have been built.
Several rings of walls and moats serve as the main defense measure of castles. Osaka Castle and the former Edo Castle (now Tokyo's Imperial Palace) offer the most impressive examples.
Japanese castles developed a series of defensive features over the centuries, including inventive variations on moats, earthen embankments, and stone walls. Nawabari, literally meaning “stretched rope,” is a term for the layout of a Japanese castle.
Soldiers either scaled walls with ladders or overran castle walls breached by tunnels, battering rams, or artillery. Sometimes they attacked two or three spots around the castle at once to surprise their foe or divide castle defenses, and sometimes they approached the wall hidden within a trench or tunnel.
If they had enough supplies, they were VERY GOOD INDEED for the most part 'till cannons got powerful enough to start rendering them obsolete. There's a reason some of castle sieges ended by treachery from within, a HUGE number ended with surrender of the defenders due to starvation, and very few ended by assault.
Tall thick curtain walls surrounded the castle buildings like a strong shield. There were few doors in the wall thus limiting access to the castle. Towers built as part of the curtain wall. Castles with curtain walls with flanking towers were more difficult to capture.
Castle of Zafra, Campillo de DuenasThis partly restored castle in Spain was built in the late 12th century or early 13th century. It holds the distinction of never being conquered.
What other rooms were there in a Medieval castle? At the time of Chr tien de Troyes, the rooms where the lord of a castle, his family and his knights lived and ate and slept were in the Keep (called the Donjon), the rectangular tower inside the walls of a castle. This was meant to be the strongest and safest place.