Two thousand years of Welsh history stand inside one set of walls in the middle of a capital city. Cardiff Castle on Castle Street occupies the site of four successive Roman forts, the first established around the 50s AD to control the Taff crossing, the last - a stone fortress of about 270 AD - still visible in the reconstructed walls that frame the site today. After the Norman Conquest, Robert Fitzhamon raised a motte-and-bailey within the Roman footprint around 1081, and the twelve-sided shell keep crowning the great earth mound remains one of the finest of its kind in Britain, a stronghold that anchored the turbulent Welsh Marches for centuries. The castle's second act belongs to the Bute family, the Scottish marquesses who acquired it in 1766 and grew colossally rich on Glamorgan coal - the 2nd Marquess built the Cardiff docks that turned a sleepy town into the world's greatest coal port. His son, the 3rd Marquess, reputedly the richest man in Britain, met the genius art-architect William Burges in 1865 and spent sixteen years transforming the medieval fortress into a Gothic Revival dream palace: the Clock Tower with its gilded bachelor suites, the Arab Room's golden ceiling, the Banqueting Hall - interiors ranked among the most magnificent the Gothic Revival ever achieved. Capability Brown had earlier landscaped the grounds, and Burges's successor William Frame added the famous Animal Wall. The 5th Marquess gave the castle and parklands to the people of Cardiff in 1947. Today it operates as the city's flagship heritage attraction: house tours through the Burges interiors, the Norman keep, the Roman gallery within the walls, wartime air-raid shelter tunnels that sheltered thousands during the Blitz, and the Firing Line military museum, with Bute Park's 130 acres at its back. The grounds double as one of Wales's great event spaces - open-air concerts under the DEPOT Live banner, festivals, and spectaculars against the floodlit keep - keeping the fortress at the working heart of Cardiff life, as it has been in one form or another since Rome.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Castle Street, Cardiff, United Kingdom, CF10 3RB

Website: https://www.cardiffcastle.com

Serves Food

Outdoor Area

Accessible