The building naked Castle occupies went up in 1910. The hotel inside it opened in 2017. Both sit on Moganshan, a mountain in China’s Zhejiang Province, in Deqing County within Huzhou prefecture, 200 to 240 km from Shanghai and only 60 km from Hangzhou. Moganshan Road, the Shanghai art district that owns most of the search traffic for this name, is 200 km away.
Nobody from this site has slept in the building. So what follows describes it and stops there. No score, no ranking, no account of rooms we have never walked into.
Four things the record settles
| Item | What we have |
|---|---|
| Opened | 2017 |
| Rooms | about 95 keys |
| The building | an English-castle-style villa built in 1910 |
| Who built it | a Scottish physician and missionary named Maitland |
Opening date, room count and origin of the building, BeyondBorder Group Ltd primary research, 1 to 5 August 2026.
“Keys” means rooms, and the property is part of naked Retreats. Of Maitland himself the record keeps only a nationality and a profession.
The building is 107 years older than the hotel
In 1910 a Scottish doctor who came to China as a missionary built himself a house in English castle style. He was not alone. That same year about 300 foreigners, most of them American and British, held summer homes on these slopes: missionaries, businessmen and customs officials. They came in July because Shanghai summers were unbearable and, before air conditioning, dangerous.
The colony was already old by then. American Protestant missionaries found the mountain in the 1890s, and the earliest Western villas date from 1896 to 1898.
Maitland built at the top of the boom. Nine years on, the foreign-owned stock was 154 villas. By 1929 it was 78, and in 1949 the foreigners left for good.
Hill station figures for 1910, the 1920s and 1929, BeyondBorder Group Ltd primary research, 1 to 5 August 2026.
Why this villa and not the other 249
| Figure | |
|---|---|
| Foreign summer households here in 1910 | about 300 |
| Stone villas from that era still standing | about 250 |
| Of those, bookable for a night | a handful, this one among them |
Most are private homes or private leases. Others are fenced off or under restoration.
So of the whole hill station, this is where the line to today’s resort trade is easiest to see. Summers here sit about 6 to 7 °C below what Shanghai and Hangzhou get, and that difference is the whole reason a town grew up here.
Seeing the rest means a walk and a lot of garden walls. The stone villas covers what survives, and the history has the dates.
Where the Castle sits inside naked Retreats
The mountain then spent fifty years out of the tourism business, which makes the next dates interesting. naked Retreats is a small group of properties around Moganshan, founded by Grant Horsfield, a South African.
| Year | Property | What it was |
|---|---|---|
| 2007 | naked Home Village | The first yangjiale (洋家乐) on the mountain, at Sanjiuwu. The word means a farmstay opened by a foreigner |
| 2011 | naked Stables | The first resort in mainland China to certify LEED Platinum |
| 2017 | naked Castle | About 95 rooms, in Maitland’s restored 1910 villa |
Opening years and room totals across the naked group, BeyondBorder Group Ltd primary research, 1 to 5 August 2026.
naked Retreats was not the first foreigner back. Mark Kitto opened Moganshan Lodge on a 2003 lease. But 2007 is when the wave started, and guesthouse investors here come from 18 countries.
The price band, and what it actually covers
Roughly USD 291 to 524 a night, checked 6 August 2026.
Rate band across naked Stables and naked Castle, BeyondBorder Group Ltd primary research, 1 to 5 August 2026.
Read that as a band rather than a quote for a room. It covers naked Stables and naked Castle together, and the season and the day of the week move it further than the choice between the two properties does.
For scale, the local trade sets its high-end threshold at RMB 1,500, and rooms above that line grew 42 percent year on year. Luxury stays sets that against the rest of the mountain.
Deqing station, then the transfer you cannot skip
Money settled, the harder constraint is the clock.
Your station is Deqing. Moganshan railway station serves Wukang town, not the mountain.
| Leg | Detail |
|---|---|
| From Shanghai Hongqiao | 63 to 80 min on 13 daily direct trains |
| From Hangzhou East | 13 to 17 min, 16 trains a day |
| Deqing station to the mountain | 30 to 40 minutes by road |
| Taxi or van for that leg | about RMB 100 |
| Y1 shuttle instead | RMB 10, seven a day, stops in Moganshan town |
Now the constraint that breaks arrival plans. Private cars stop at the scenic-area boundary. Three points handle the swap: Yucun, Fatou and Houwu. All work 08:00 to 18:00 and no later, so landing at Deqing at 19:00 means you have missed them.
Which side of that line your bed is on decides whether this hits you. Message the hotel before booking the train, not after you land. Getting around covers the transfers.
What to ask before you book
| Ask about | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Room types and what each one includes | The categories are not obvious from the listing photographs |
| Whether the room sits in the 1910 building or a newer one | The castle is the reason people come, and not every key is inside it |
| Which transfer center serves the property, and the 18:00 close | This is the question that decides your arrival evening |
| Foreign passports and cards | Under a joint directive dated 24 May 2024, hotels may not turn foreign guests away. Refusals still get reported, so confirm in writing |
We do not reprint review scores from booking sites either. They are somebody else’s numbers, gathered by a method nobody can inspect.
One last naming problem: Moganshan Solvang Village is a different property here. If this is not your place, all hotels has the rest and money and payments covers cards.
Opening date, room count and rate band checked 6 August 2026. The band covers two properties and moves fast.
Last checked 8 August 2026 by Echo Peng. Prices, timetables and entry rules on this mountain move without notice, so confirm anything you are booking around.
Photographs on this site are representative illustrations, not documentary images of the specific building, property or service described.
