John Erskine, Earl of Mar, built the present Braemar Castle in 1628 as a hunting lodge and to counter the rising power of the Farquharsons. It is a five-story L-plan castle with a star-shaped curtain wall of six sharp-angled salients. Three-story angle turrets flank a central tower enclosing a round stair tower. The walls are granite covered with harl, and the ground-floor rooms are stone-vaulted. John Adam, Master Mason to the Board of Ordnance, began a rebuilding, but the article gives no date.
John Farquharson, the Black Colonel of Inverey, burned the castle in 1689 to deny it to government troops. The Crown forfeited it in 1716, and it served as a Hanoverian garrison from 1748 to 1831.
Since 2006 a local charity has leased it. It reopened to the public in 2008.
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