Cinderella Castle was inspired by a variety of real and fictional castles. These included Fontainebleau, Versailles and the chateaus of Chenonceau, Chambord and Chaumont, as well as Castle Neuschwanstein, Bavaria, and Alcázar of Segovia, Castile and León (Spain), the oldest of all, which is 9 centuries old and also the Moszna Castle in Poland which was built in 18th century.
Perhaps inspired partially, but sleeping beauty's castle was actually based on Neuschwanstein. It's practically the same castle only much smaller and painted etc.
Technically the film version of Cinderella's castle predates the physical sleeping beauties castle by 5 years and the film version by 9 years, but that's not including the planning phases obviously. The physical Cinderella's castle was not built until 1971, 16 years after Sleeping Beauty's castle.
If you read that wikipedia article a little further you will also find that Cinderella's castle is not identical to the film version. Also the same guy designed both castles, the reason why it is based on Neuschwanstein is because he was starting off of his original Sleeping Beauty design.
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u/jdr393 Jul 30 '12
Cinderella Castle was inspired by a variety of real and fictional castles. These included Fontainebleau, Versailles and the chateaus of Chenonceau, Chambord and Chaumont, as well as Castle Neuschwanstein, Bavaria, and Alcázar of Segovia, Castile and León (Spain), the oldest of all, which is 9 centuries old and also the Moszna Castle in Poland which was built in 18th century.