The Celebrity Traitors lands on screens this Thursday, with Michael Sheen, Maya Jama and a batch of other famous faces checking into Claudia Winkleman's castle of cloaks and betrayals. The setting is the same one fans of the UK and US versions already know: Ardross Castle, a 19th-century Gothic pile in the Scottish Highlands, just north of Inverness.
The estate's story is longer than the show's. The land was bought in the late 1700s by the 1st Duke of Sutherland, who put up a hunting lodge. In 1845 MP and opium trader Sir Alexander Matheson acquired the estate for £90,000 and brought in architect Alexander Ross to reshape it in the Scottish Baronial style — Ross added roughly 30 rooms to the existing mansion for £7,000, plus lawns, a pond and a fountain. The castle changed hands through the 19th and 20th centuries, was broken up and sold off in 1937, and has belonged to the McTaggart family since 1983, when renovation work and new planting began.
The estate covers more than 100 acres of parkland along the banks of the River Alness, and that geography shapes the show. Outdoor missions — the muddy, maze-heavy challenges — happen on the grounds, while the roundtables, banquets and banishments unfold inside the castle's interiors. Interestingly, the contestants don't actually sleep there: during filming they stay at a Courtyard by Marriott near Inverness airport, and the overnight drama you see on screen is shot at the castle.
Can you book a room and play Faithful yourself? Not quite. Ardross doesn't take individual guests, so there's no bed-and-breakfast Traitors fantasy on offer. But it is hireable — it operates as a wedding and conference venue for private and corporate events. According to The Times, weddings for up to 130 guests over two nights start at £45,000, which is a steep price for a roundtable with your mates but perhaps reasonable for a full Scottish castle to yourself.
If you can't stump up £45,000, the Highlands around Inverness make a decent consolation. The city is a straightforward base for castle-hunting, whisky country and Loch Ness day trips, and the show's moody aesthetic — mist, pines, stone turrets — is exactly what the region does well. Fans could even drive out towards Alness to see the river and parkland where the missions are staged, though access to the castle itself is limited to booked events.
For travellers, the takeaway is simple: you can't sleep in the Traitors castle, but you can get married in it, and Inverness makes a fine Highland escape if the show has you craving tartan drama of your own.
