A castle town is a settlement built adjacent to or surrounding a castle

Castle

A castle is a type of fortified structure built in Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars debate the scope of the word castle, but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble...

. Castle towns are common in Medieval Europe. Good example include small towns like Alnwick

Alnwick

Alnwick is a small market town in north Northumberland, England. The town's population was just over 8000 at the time of the 2001 census and Alnwick's district population was 31,029....

 and Arundel

Arundel

Arundel is a market town and civil parish in the South Downs of West Sussex in the south of England. It lies south southwest of London, west of Brighton, and east of the county town of Chichester. Other nearby towns include Worthing east southeast, Littlehampton to the south and Bognor Regis to...

, which are still dominated by their castles. In Western Europe, and England particularly, it is common for cities and towns that were not castle towns to instead have been organised around cathedral

Cathedral

A cathedral is a Christian church that contains the seat of a bishop...

s.

Towns organized around Japanese castle

Japanese castle

' were fortresses composed primarily of wood and stone. They evolved from the wooden stockades of earlier centuries, and came into their best-known form in the 16th century...

s are called jōkamachi .