White Chess Rook

It's the corner piece that sweeps straight along rows and columns.

Each player starts with two rooks in the corners. A rook moves any number of squares horizontally or vertically, as long as nothing blocks it, and it takes part in castling, the one move where king and rook move together. Players usually count a rook as worth about five pawns.

“White” in the name means the outlined drawing used for White's pieces; ♜ is the filled one for Black. Chess books and websites print ♖ in figurine notation, writing ♖e1 instead of a letter, because the letter changes by language: R in English, T in German and French, W in Polish, Т in Ukrainian.

Why is it called a rook and shaped like a castle?

It began as a chariot; European sets later gave it a tower.

Early chess in India mirrored an army: elephants, horses, chariots and foot soldiers. Persian chess called the chariot piece rukh, and that word became English rook. Medieval pieces from the Islamic world were often abstract blocks, and one surviving 11th–12th-century rukh is carved as riders, not a tower.

European carvers turned it into a tower, which is why English speakers call it a castle and many languages simply name it “tower”: Turm, tour, torre, wieża. The move never changed: it still charges straight like a chariot.