Top 10 Castles in Wales
Wales has more castles per square kilometre than any other country in the world — over 600 in a country the size of Massachusetts. This density is the product of the Norman conquest (from 1066), the independent Welsh princes who built their own fortifications in response, and above all Edward I of England's systematic programme of castle construction from 1277, which created the most ambitious and expensive military building programme of the Middle Ages. Edward spent over 80,000 pounds on his Welsh castles in the 1280s alone — roughly equivalent to the English Crown's entire annual income for several years. Find every one of them on the map.
1. Caernarfon Castle, Gwynedd (UNESCO)
Caernarfon, begun in 1283 after Edward I's first Welsh campaign, is the most politically explicit of the Edwardian castles: a statement of conquest and administrative control built at the site of a Roman fort (Segontium), where Constantine was said to have been born. The banded masonry of its polygonal towers — modelled on the Theodosian walls of Constantinople — and the Eagle Tower, the largest tower in any Edwardian castle, were deliberate references to imperial Rome. Edward I ensured that his son, the future Edward II, was born here in 1284 and presented to Welsh leaders as a prince who spoke no English. UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd (1986).
2. Conwy Castle, Conwy (UNESCO)
Conwy, built in four years from 1283-87 at a cost of approximately 14,500 pounds, is architecturally the most complete of the Edwardian castles. Its eight massive circular towers on a rock above the Conwy estuary, and the complete town walls of over one kilometre that were built simultaneously, give the most comprehensive impression of an Edwardian planned garrison town anywhere in Britain. There is no central keep — the defensive strength lies entirely in the circuit of towers and walls, a principle of concentric planning applied to a linear rock rather than a flat site. UNESCO World Heritage Site.
3. Beaumaris Castle, Anglesey (UNESCO)
Beaumaris, begun in 1295 on the flat marshland of Anglesey, is the most technically perfect concentric castle in Britain and possibly in Europe. Its architect, James of St George, the Savoyard master of works who designed all four of Edward's principal Welsh castles, had the advantage of a flat site that allowed a geometrically regular concentric plan: an inner ward of square towers and a lower outer ward surrounding it on all sides, with a water-filled moat. The castle was never fully completed — Edward's financial difficulties meant construction stopped in the 1300s — and was never seriously tested in siege. UNESCO World Heritage Site.
4. Harlech Castle, Gwynedd (UNESCO)
Harlech, built on a coastal rock above Tremadog Bay from 1283-89, is the most vertically dramatic of the Edwardian castles: its square-towered inner ward rises directly from the cliff top, and the water gate at the base of the cliff allowed resupply by sea. Owain Glyndwr, the last native Prince of Wales, took it in 1404 after a siege and held it as his court until 1409. In the Wars of the Roses, it was held for the Lancastrians from 1461 to 1468 — the last Lancastrian garrison in Wales, an endurance commemorated in the march "Men of Harlech." UNESCO World Heritage Site.
5. Caerphilly Castle, Caerphilly
Caerphilly, built by Gilbert de Clare, Lord of Glamorgan, from 1268, is the largest castle in Wales and the second largest in Britain after Windsor. It was the first purely concentric castle to be built in Britain, anticipating Edward I's programme by a decade, and its system of water defences — a series of artificial lakes and islands created by damming — was unprecedented in British military architecture. The southeast tower, famously leaning more than the Tower of Pisa as a result of demolition attempts in the Civil War, is Caerphilly's most photographed feature. Edward II sheltered here in 1326 before his capture.
6. Pembroke Castle, Pembrokeshire
Pembroke, above the Pembroke River in southwest Wales, was the most powerful Norman castle in Wales — the base from which the Norman earls of Pembroke controlled the southwest and launched the invasion of Ireland in 1169. The great circular keep, 24 metres high with walls 6 metres thick, was built for William Marshal around 1204 and is structurally unique in Britain. Henry VII — Henry Tudor — was born here in 1457. Cromwell besieged it in 1648 during the second phase of the Civil War and ordered its partial demolition. Substantial restoration was undertaken in the early 20th century.
7. Chepstow Castle, Monmouthshire
Chepstow, on a narrow cliff above the River Wye, was begun by William FitzOsbern immediately after the Norman Conquest — the stone keep's lower section may date from 1067-71, making it one of the earliest Norman stone fortifications in Britain. The castle was modified by William Marshal in the early 13th century and by Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, in the late 13th century. After the Civil War it was used as a prison: Henry Marten, a signatory of Charles I's death warrant, was imprisoned here from 1660 until his death in 1680.
8. Raglan Castle, Monmouthshire
Raglan, in Monmouthshire, was one of the last medieval castles built in Wales (from 1435) and the finest of the 15th century in the country: Sir William ap Thomas began it and his son Sir William Herbert — later Earl of Pembroke under Edward IV — created the great hexagonal tower (the Yellow Tower of Gwent) and the elaborate gatehouse. The castle's unprecedented use of a great tower detached from the main ward — surrounded by its own moat and accessible only by drawbridge — is unique in Wales. It was besieged by Parliamentary forces for three months in 1646 and slighted; the Yellow Tower was undermined and partly destroyed.
9. Castell Coch, Cardiff
Castell Coch, above the Taff Valley north of Cardiff, was built as a Victorian fairy-tale castle from 1875 by the architect William Burges for the 3rd Marquess of Bute on the foundations of a genuine 13th-century castle. Burges and the Marquess, who had previously collaborated on the interior of Cardiff Castle, produced an interior of extraordinary Gothic elaboration — the drawing room ceiling painted with birds and the bed chamber with stars and biblical figures. It was never intended as a permanent residence; it has electricity, installed for brief holiday use. The external silhouette, with its conical tower roofs, is among the most recognisable in Wales.
10. Powis Castle, Powys
Powis, above Welshpool in Powys, is the only medieval castle in Wales to have been continuously occupied as a residence and the only one with its original state rooms still furnished. Built by the Welsh princes of Powys from the late 13th century and held by the Herbert family from 1587, it has Baroque state rooms of the late 17th century and the most important historic terraced gardens in Britain — cut into the hillside in the 1720s and retaining clipped yew hedges of exceptional scale. The Clive Museum within the castle, holding Robert Clive's (Clive of India's) collection of Mughal and British Indian objects, is a collection without peer in Wales.
Edward I's Iron Ring
The four UNESCO-listed castles — Caernarfon, Conwy, Beaumaris, and Harlech — were all built by the same architect, James of St George, within a decade, as a coordinated system. Their positions were chosen to be resuppliable by sea, to interlock their fields of control, and to anchor English plantation towns whose burgesses were deliberately recruited from England. Understanding them as a system — which the map makes immediately visible — is more illuminating than understanding them individually.