Sadly, a lot of medieval castles today are very different from the way they looked in their hey day. Re-modelling and change of use, as well as the ravages of time, make it difficult for us to imagine life in a castle. Manuscripts, instead, still give out the light of medieval courtly life as when they were first illuminated.
It is also almost impossible for us today to imagine what medieval cities looked like. Walls, turrets, gates, tiny roads, horses and donkeys as means of transport, open air sewage...A pilgrim reaching the wall of Jerusalem would have been met by a sight like this:
For an amazing, and ever changing, source of inspiration on all things medieval, I strongly recommend the British Library manuscript Twitter: https://twitter.com/BLMedieval