Caernarfon Castle

Caernarfon Castle does not look like the other fortresses Edward I raised in Wales. Instead of round towers it has many-sided ones, and its long curtain walls are striped with bands of differently coloured stone. Historians have long debated why. One influential reading, put forward by Arnold Taylor, holds that the king was quoting the Theodosian walls of Constantinople, laying claim to imperial Roman authority on a site already linked to Rome: the fort of Segontium stands on the edge of the town. During the building works, a chronicle claimed, the body of the emperor Magnus Maximus was found and reburied on Edward's orders. Medieval Welsh tradition tells of Maximus dreaming of a splendid fortress at a river mouth facing an island, and carved eagles were later set on the castle's grandest tower.

Work on the stone castle began in 1283, right after Edward's conquest of Gwynedd, on the site of a Norman motte-and-bailey from the late eleventh century. The master mason was probably James of Saint George, the engineer behind Edward's Welsh castle programme, although some historians credit Walter of Hereford, who took charge of the second phase. The castle and the new walled town were meant to govern north Wales, and between 1284 and 1330 they absorbed £20,000–25,000, an enormous sum for the time. Even so, the castle was never completed. The plan is a narrow figure of eight divided into two wards. The Eagle Tower, with its three turrets, held grand lodgings and a water gate on the River Seiont. The King's Gate was designed so that anyone entering had to pass two drawbridges, five doors and six portcullises. The curtain walls still stand almost whole, while the buildings inside survive only as foundations.

According to tradition, the future Edward II was born here in 1284. Ten years later Madog ap Llywelyn's rebels captured and burned the half-built castle. Owain Glyndŵr's forces besieged it without success in 1401–1404, and Parliamentarian troops besieged it three times during the English Civil War. After that it was left to decay until state-funded repairs began in the nineteenth century. The investitures of the Prince of Wales were held here in 1911 and 1969. Since 1986 the castle has been part of the World Heritage Site "Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd". The royal town of Caernarfon around it sits at the mouth of the Seiont on the Menai Strait, facing Anglesey, and much of its old core still lies inside the medieval walls.

Getting there

The castle stands in Caernarfon itself. Bangor is about 14 km to the north-east, and the A487 trunk road runs through Caernarfon. The nearest airport by straight-line distance is on the Isle of Man, across the Irish Sea. On the British mainland, the nearest major airport is Liverpool John Lennon (LPL), about 98 km away. Caernarfon has had no mainline railway since 1970; the nearest mainline station is in Bangor.