The castle stands in Glen Garry, and commands a strategic position on the main route (now the A9 road) through the central Scottish Highlands.

Upon his return, the Earl complained about the interloper to King Alexander III, won back his land, and incorporated the tower that had been built into his own castle.

During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms of the 17th century, the Murrays supported the Royalist cause, which led to Blair Castle being taken by Oliver Cromwell's army following his invasion of 1650.

Atholl's factor, Patrick Stewart of Ballechin, held Blair Castle for King James, and Dundee visited in May.

In July Ballechin refused entry to Atholl's whiggish son and heir, Lord John Murray.

Part of the castle was converted to a hospital during the First World War; poet Hamish Henderson's mother had worked there as a nurse on her return from France.

The oldest part of the castle is the six-storey Cummings or Comyn's Tower, which may retain some 13th-century fabric, though it was largely built in the 15th century.

Finally, the castle arrived at its present form in the 1870s, when David Bryce remodelled the whole building for the 7th Duke of Atholl in a Scots Baronial style, and added the ballroom.

[12] In 2009, a Grand Fir (Abies grandis) in Diana's Grove in the grounds of the castle, was measured at 62.7 metres (206 ft), and declared the second-tallest tree in Britain.